


Chasing Light

by SpiritOfErebus



Category: RWBY
Genre: Blindness, Reincarnation, i suck at tagging lol, no beta we die like men, shenanigans about a past life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 85,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28762938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritOfErebus/pseuds/SpiritOfErebus
Summary: Hope. A feeling so common yet elusive, so simple yet inexplicable. Reincarnating into a strange world was not the way our protagonist expected to escaped from his curse of blindness, but he'll take what he can get. The only thing he really needs to keep in mind is not to get eviscerated. "Wait, What? Is it too late to go back?"Crossposted from ff.net. Note: Author's notes will be in the chapter.Any posting dates that the chapter says are the day that this has been posted is the ff.net post date.Please PM or comment grammar mistakes.
Relationships: None
Kudos: 1





	1. A1 C1 Unveiled

**Act 1 Chapter 1: Unveiled**

**Hey Guys!**

**I'm SpiritOfErebus here.**

**Feel free to comment or report any issues with formatting or other things! I'm not exactly the most experienced person at writing various things and posting them.**

**In case it was unclear, two rows of dots means that I'm probably exiting a memory excerpt and entering the actual story.**

**Edit 11/9/2020: Also, if a perspective change gets really weird, just tell me about it in a PM. I'm working on the issue with the future chapters by keeping the view consistently in first person (most of the time), and it really would take too much time that I don't have to rewrite all of these chapters. If you don't want to read all of the pre-canon stuff, skip to Act 3. I'll include a brief summary of what you all missed.**

Excerpt: Old Memories #17

The world was dark.

Figuratively and literally, in my case.

It laughed in my face, shunned me, pushed me around.

All because I was blind. And trying for an engineering degree. My village could not understand my pursuits. I should be tending to the crops by digging irrigation ditches(the crudest task that my lack of vision allowed me to do).

"You'll never be able to make it to the city on your own." They said when I was a child.

Stumbling, I ran blindly into the forest when the bullies taunted and jeered, pushing me from all directions. There was so much sound in the air. So many vibrations for my oversensitive ears to hear. I whimpered and trembled on the ground as they tripped me and then-

I wished with all my heart to see. To be able to interpret colors. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Purple. All foreign terms I was depraved of. Maybe then people would stop casting me off.

To escape that little place, I honed my memory to perfection. I memorized everything I could, from the little songs on television to the feeling of grass and the position of the apple trees bordering the rice farms, and how many paces they were from each other tree. Spending hours in the grove, I tried to use various techniques of navigation to hide the fact that I was blind. Seismic, sound, and vibration sensing were very useful. My footsteps would echo off my surroundings, giving me a feel of where things are, as natural wind curved around obstacles in my way. Seismic sensing allowed me to detect animals coming my way, their light paws making the earth shake slightly.

Now, walking in the city a year into engineering school, I walked at night across a bridge. The water flowed beneath me, the gurgling as the flow of the smooth liquid passed over pebbles reaching my ears. I reviewed today's lecture from school. Mechanical principles were a hassle to utilize, and the only way I could practice them was think of different cases in which they were applied.

Interrupted from my thoughts by a sudden influx of vibrations, I stopped and concentrated. Behind me, two people approached. They walked quickly, sending sudden vibrations through the earth. I walked on and turned slightly to the left to give those people a birth and let them go wherever they wanted urgently.

The vibrations headed towards me instead, growing stronger steadily.

I realized the malicious intent. I began running, years of being chased coming to mind. I listened to the sound of my own footsteps and heard them echo off walls of the apartments.

I did not detect a rogue stick in the middle of the road.

Stepping on the stick, I tripped. I held out my arm in front of my face to avoid my nose being crushed. Scrambling to my feet, I turned to receive a fist to the face. I tripped backwards, but thrust my left leg behind me and steadied myself in the horse stance, holding out my fists.

Another punch came, but I was prepared this time. The wind whistled as the blow approached my torso, but I located it and caught the fist. Pulling it, I sidestepped as I guided the attacker's body to fall face first. When the thump of a fall was heard, I kicked the man and he wheezed, coughing violently.

It was during this period of obliviousness to my surroundings that the second man struck. Distracted by the vibrations of a convulsing body on the bridge, I noticed an object being swung at the back of my head too late for my reaction to matter.

I was hit. The world became hazy in my mind. My senses died. My heart thumped in my head, sending waves through my mindscape and disrupting information flow. I stumbled from the blow and gripped the first solid object that I could find to reorient myself: the railings of the bridge.

I felt my pockets being rustled and my wallet falling out. Trying to get the attacker away, I kicked at the thief, who was not struck by the desperate blow and whacked me once more in the back of the head.

Ringing sounded in my head as I fell, off balance, into the river below. My sensed dulled as I felt my body being swept away by the currents and dragged over pebbles and rocks.

And then the person known as Mei ZhiLing was no more.

...

...

An infant opened his eyes and revealed his location to be in a basket.

Wait, what?

He opened his eyes? And saw things? Impossible.

He blinked, and looked at his surroundings. Blobs of color were slowly coming into focus, the ambient yellow and green of dried bamboo coming into view. Not that he knew what those colors were, anyways.

The last thing he could remember was his sensed fading away as he drowned, incapable of moving due to a heavy blow to the back of the head. This whole experience was new. Colors, information flooded his mind as he clumsily pinched his own arms.

Looking at his hands, the unnamed infant realized that they were a size too small compared to what he used to have. It should be about the same size as a book, not four times smaller than the one beside him!

"What the hell is happening right now?"

The infant's brain whirled in confusion.

Outside of his realm of confusion, a man whirled around a weapon at dark wolves, a staff in hand and basket behind his back. He wore a conical hat and dark robes, along with a wide leather waistband that bound his entire girth, giving him a lithe look. A scrap of black silk was tied around his eyes as he sprinted in the bamboo forest.

From his left, a variant of the dark beasts sprang. The creature itself was an odd sight, boasting a pitch-black hide with a bone mask and beady red eyes, along with several bone spikes protruding from its back. The shady mockery of a bear roared and swiped its claws at the back of the basket, the hulking creature intending on smacking the child and the man into the dirt.

One would think this was the end of the brief life of the infant and the relatively longer life of the man.

However, the man, though blindfolded by the silk, jumped in the air and flipped backwards. The passenger in the basket almost vomited at the sudden influx of centrifugal force. The flip carried the man over the strike. What was crazier was that mid-flip, the man stabbed the beast at the side of the neck with the keen point of his staff in one fluid motion. Upon landing, the cloaked man stabbed an approaching wolf without turning back, kicked off the wolf's dying body, and continued sprinting.

Another pack of wolves came out of the forest and surrounded the two. With abnormally long limbs and the same bone masks and beady red eyes, they resembled an assembly of demons. Surrounded, the man spun slowly on the spot as the wolves formed a ring formation around the two humans in the crowd.

One wolf sprung, apparently eager for the gore. The man swung his staff in an arc and scored the jumping beast across the stomach. Black fluid sprayed from the gut of the monster as the man reversed his grip and stabbed a wolf in the mouth that was approaching him from behind. The beast wilted on the spot, muscles relaxing and body slowly disintegrating. Spin kicking two wolves away, the man freed the staff and hit another wolf in the gut with the handle.

As this dance of death was going on, the child danced with motion sickness. As the man fighting the beasts twirled and stabbed elegantly and as fluently as the wind, the child was tossed and turned in a duel with the urge to vomit. How he managed not to fall out of the flimsily closed basket was a mystery.

While all this was going on, black blood kept oozing into the basket. The child flailed at it, unfamiliar with the creepy substance. There was no black blood where the child's soul used to reside! It couldn't even see the color black before he came into this accursed basket.

"What is going on out there?" he thought, as his head almost hit the lid of the basket again due to a flying leap done by the man. A spin-kick followed the move, and the child's face was slammed hard into the side of the basket.

The crowd of wolves thinned out after five minutes of slaughter. The man ran up a tree and began leaping from branch to branch. The infant fainted, its body too weak to take the continued stress of being flung about. Th darkness was familiar to him, merciful as it bought the lost soul into its depths, promising tranquility and life after this torment.

...

As more shadow creatures flooded the area and began trampling the trees (courtesy of the resident bears), the man found himself on the edge of a cliff.

He looked(?) behind him, turning his head arbitrarily, almost as if out of habit. His blindfolded eyes were pointed at the black wave that was about to corner him. Without sparing another glance, he jumped off the cliff, robes billowing out and catching the wind as he sailed off the edge towards the river down below.

The infant woke up from a very pleasant nap. The lost soul within dreamt of being in a basket and being able to see. Yawning, he opened his eyes to reveal that once again, he could see.

Looking around the basket in awe, he maneuvered his hands (with quite some difficulty, considering his age and the novelty of sight itself) to grasp the fibers of the basket. Peering out, however, he was greeted by the sight of the approaching river.

The new feeling of vertigo and fear of heights were instilled into the infant's mind as he became a pile of unresponsive limbs once more.

...

Ozpin stepped out from the airship with a heavy heart.

The last of his previous incarnation's descendants were most likely wiped out in this attack. The offspring he once had lived in this rural farming village, outside of the world's stage, and stayed there for many centuries. He could still remember them, two innocent girls living peacefully, silver eyes twinkling in the candlelight as their mother told them embarrassing stories about how her and Ozpin's previous incarnation met.

Ever since the tenth incarnation, things began to blur together. Now, on his fiftieth, Ozpin no longer remember all his incarnation's names. Years of sorrow, loss, sacrifice, and more loss weighed on his mind. Memories of dead agents and the cries of their families echoed throughout the centuries of war he fought. From the early agrarian settlements to today's kingdoms, the histories of the four modern kingdoms were but a blink of an eye to Ozpin.

On the forty-first incarnation (or something near it), the two silver eyed children were born. That was a lifetime during which he took a break from the war, Salem delayed by the loss of many pawns. Ozpin remembered taking them out before dying of exhaustion.

Now, he stood at the bank of the river as he watched a black shade throw a metal staff fiercely into the riverbed, using the reaction force from throwing the object to slow his fall. It would be his last mission. After all, this man suffered greatly for the cause and was now almost sixty years old. A casualty in his mission to delay Salem's inevitable rise.

The man came in, born on a stretcher. His right leg shattered and right eye socket oozing what could best be described as melted eyeball and parts of the brain. His blue aura flared uselessly, keeping the man alive but in terrible condition. Cybernetics were necessary if the man even wanted to use his brain. He took an experimental laser blast to the face as he tried to stop-

Deep breath. A sip of coffee. Everything was fine.

The man landed on his staff with his cybernetic right leg absorbing the impact, causing a stiff breeze as the man's baggy robes fell flat against his frame. Jumping once more and somehow pulling the staff with him, the man landed Infront of Ozpin and stood to a dead halt.

Cybernetics had taken a toll on the man. Instead of the lax, cheery ninja that usually greeted everybody with a shock buzzer, he was greeted with a shell of a man. A husk with a purpose. With cybernetic eyes, right leg, amygdala(the emotional part of the brain), and diaphragm, he breathed silently and stood as straight as a soldier, with no personal opinion left to speak of. Ozpin rued the day he sent him to defend a simple village on the frontier. There was an ambush, and a flamethrower-wielding minion of Salem decided to try and torch-

Deep breath. Another sip of coffee. Everything was fine.

Ozpin's calm eyes, completely void of emotion, looked at the silent ninja, and spoke.

"How was the mission?"

"Not very good."

"Were any of them alive? What of the grim? Were any of Salem's henchmen present?"

"Just one. Mostly dead. One was present, but I could not fight them off. He radiated lightning."

Used to the brief and vague mission reports, Ozpin merely sighed.

"Did you bring them with you?"

The man took the basket from his back. It was very small, and almost obscured by the hood of the black cloak that the man wore everywhere, a gift from his late mentor. Ozpin dragged his thoughts out of the past (with a lot of practice) and took the basket with slightly shaking hands. The man noticed this, thanks to his implants, but didn't know how to do anything about it.

Ozpin opened the basket and saw a sleeping child. He looked as if he were sleeping, with the beginnings of white hair. Taking the book that was also in the basket, he thumbed through a book of runes and graphs. He recognized it instantly. It was a transcript version of book he had spent a decade trying to decipher, the book that he had left with his descendants, hoping it could be useful in some way to protect their silver eyes.

The rustling of the pages awoke the child. Instead of typical two-month-old child behavior, he just opened its eyes and looked up at Ozpin with a calm expression, even if one could not really tell with young children.

Wait.

The eyes.

Ozpin opened his eyes to speak, but his companion beat him to it.

"The child's eyes are indeed silver." The hooded ninja said.

Silver eyes. Another innocent soul dragged into a lifetime of turmoil.

Ozpin put the book and the child back in the basket, and handed it back to the ninja.

"Xin, my old friend, I must request that you take the child with you."

"Why. I am no good with children."

"He is safer with you than with me. You are the one that is supposedly killed in action, after all. Keep him in a secure region. Train him to live and survive, then send him to find me when he is ready."

"True. You should name him, though. After all, with the silver eyes and white hair, he might actually be one of your old incarnation's descendants." Xin said.

Thinking for a moment, Ozpin came up with something.

"Yun. His name is Yun Wu. May he soar above the conflicts of the world like the clouds he is named after."

Emotionlessly, Xin turned and sprinted off into the woods, no doubt taking the child to a safe location like he said.

Ozpin turned back and boarded the sleek, white airship once more. Tightening the grip on his coffee mug, he sighed. His last sentence was nothing but empty words. Summer Rose was already being targeted for being a silver eyed warrior, just like Maria Calavera, the Grimm Reaper, had. He may need another one of them on the field if Salem's recent swell in followers was anything to go by. In recent centuries, she had kept it to one or two followers, infiltrating the kingdoms and trying to keep them unstable. Nowadays, she had four pawns. And those pawns had pawns, as well. Hazel, with his decade old grudge. Tyrian, with his mad devotion. The other two had hidden identities that not even Atlas's databases could cover.

He looked out of the window to see a shadow dart from one tree to the other.

Turning, he sent a scroll message to the operative members of team STRQ to scout out the area around this village for a sign of Hazel.

This deadly game of chess must be played, as it has for five thousand years.

And hiding your emotions was something one excelled at after practicing it for that long, be it sorrow or despair.


	2. A1C2 Unbound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Notes in text.

**AN: I'm back after two days! What a surprise!**

**Anyways, there's just one real thing I have to mention. Italicized speech is Chinese. And, if it were not clear, Remnant speaks English, and our protagonist, from rural China, doesn't speak it.**

**Review and Favorite, please! I would love to know if people are enjoying what I write!**

Excerpt 1: Old Memories: Old Legends

Being a child was not fun when you were blind.

Bumping into corners, fumbling around objects, an incapability of remembering what colors were, tripping into ponds and getting mud all over, ruining rice crops and getting yelled at…

Fun times.

Especially if you get laughed at afterwards.

Even alone were the consequences of my predicament prevalent.

An incapability to read, for one. Do you know how boring it is without something to listen to? Lectures in schools were the more interesting aspects of my day. The rest of it was just me stumbling around the town, being the local laughingstock.

Life was awkward, too.

Following other children, I kept the hood of my tattered hoodie up to avoid drawing attention. They usually arrived at the television at one of the richer families' homes. One does not comprehend how absurdly fawkward just listening to a cartoon was. And how I was laughed at when a wolf's howl or a gunshot was taken literally by me, during long fight scenes. I was very jumpy, to say the least. Taking the sounds out of context and trying not to respond with panic was difficult.

At least my family was kind.

On my seventh birthday, I was given an MP3 player. One that I would not use outside because mud was everywhere, and accidents and I were frequent partners in misfortune.

I asked how much the device costed them. They just said that it was worth it seeing me smile, even if I didn't know what I was doing.

Feeling my face, then, I detected that my mouth was contorted in an upward arc, and a feeling of elation inside, as if I were lighter and quicker on my feet.

Was this genuine happiness?

Filing it in my mind, I held the small plastic device in my hands, trying to find the earbuds that came with it. At last, placing my hand on one by chance, I dragged it to my ear and found the other one dangling nearby. Pressing a round button in the center, I started playing the device.

Reading -or listening- in my case was euphoria.

I could forget about my own predicaments and just focus on tales far away, of young men bumbling across ancient China, learning martial arts and fighting through armies. Of people struggling to pass a test that would be their ticket to an official position in the government and a better life.

And there were the tales of old, of mythological beings controlling nature and clashing in epic battles. Of monks conscripted to take on an impossible task, aided by three apprentices. Of goddesses saving the world by patching the sky with their life force and the world being formed when chaos itself was split in half by a godling.

Living in one of those novels would be great. With interesting adventures, quirky friends, and an epic ability would be awesome.

…..

...

Living in what would be a novel in another world was not awesome. At all.

"Why couldn't I ride in that sleek-looking metal airship?" Yun, the infant in question, wondered. He had to resort to sitting in a cramped basket with a sweaty basket and a very old book. The bumpy ride was uncomfortable to say the least, and the thirst and hunger were getting to him.

For once, he envied the life that he lived back in China, back where he was blind, and all this nonsense didn't happen.

"Don't count this life out yet." Yun thought. "This has potential. When I get out of this basket, I can be free from this sweaty prison! And I can question this Xin person for where I am. At least his name sounds Chinese, and he probably was near home. Then again, Airships like that were never a thing, unless that was one of those helicopter things that I heard but never saw."

Honestly, his last life was just a bust. It was like the feeling of standing out in the rain, the door to opportunity closed to you forever.

Trying to complain was a bust too. His attempts at speaking came out warbled, his speech organs refusing to obey the very specific instructions that he gave them.

"Agbhad." He babbled. Then, gritting his teeth in frustration, he tried to recall the sensation of speaking in his last life. The movements of the tongue. The bursts of breath that he gave when he modified the flow of air from his lungs to create vibrations that could be interpreted as Chinese.

"Abkdsidkla."

He slumped down in defeat, head hitting the wall of the basket. Speech was impossible in this state.

Lifting his limbs, he tried to hit the boundaries of his prison in frustration. He failed, misjudging the length of his limb. Turning, he saw his arm flapping uselessly in the air, a good five centimeters from his target.

When he wished for sight, he wasn't wishing for this!

…..

Xin ran through the forest. His slightly gruesome prosthetic eye was hidden behind the black blindfold as always, giving him the appearance of a scarily observant blind person.

Pushing past the large bushes that were bamboo, he continued his trek through the mountains. In the basket, the baby babbled and rattled the basket. A constant reminder that he had to find somewhere to settle down and give the child the necessary goods for his survival. And to avoid his boss's ire.

Liquid food was going to be a pain to produce. Why did Ozpin shackle him with this task? His usually passive yet cold demeanor flashed with a bit of irritation, his eyebrows contorting together.

And there Xin saw it.

A field of rice plants in the distance. Reminiscent of the small village he grew up and trained in, he allowed his damaged memory banks to run once more as he sprinted towards the place. Stepping over a dense clump of weeds and jumping over a small rock, he arrived on a dirt path. On it, tracks littered the dirt road, heading towards the village that was just destroyed in Salem's attack.

With a slightly heavy heart (feeling was difficult this recent decade), he slowed his pace and walked to the path that led to the cottage. Bringing out his staff, he stabbed the lock straight in the center. Part of the doorframe was destroyed, but the entry swung open and he looked in the shack.

It was a dusty place. Nothing much was there, just a lot of books and evidence of studying. A hypothesis was formed. A family lived here in poverty, with their child studying so that he could join some school in the city. Leaving for the city recently, they were caught in the attack and killed.

A tragic fate.

Putting the basket down, he reached inside and bought the bundle of blankets out. The child looked around in curiosity, but did not exhibit behavior such as crying or thrashing around.

That was fortunate. He didn't want to deal with a whining child now.

Putting the child and the basket on the desk, he stared as the child crawled over to a mug and peered down it, hands making a motion as if to grab the handle and try to lift it.

Was this the extent of intelligence of Ozma's offspring? To be two months old, and to already be able to deduce that a mug was used for drinking liquids based on what the kid had seen of Ozpin's obsession with drinking coffee?

He must have come from a line of prodigies.

Xin smiled. Perhaps taking care of a child wouldn't be as big of a problem as he thought.

….

Being lifted out of the basket, Yun sighed inwardly in relief, his eyes scanning the room that he was in. Illuminated only by daylight, he caught a glimpse of a desk and more books. His deductions were proven correct when his basket was set down on the table.

Looking around the desk, he saw an object that resembled a pencil in shape along with many sheets of paper.

And then, he saw it.

A mug.

He saw that white-haired old man dubbed Ozpin drinking from it.

From his twenty years of wisdom, he determined that life, water, would potentially be in it.

Desperately crawling towards it, he reached for the handle, failed, and peered inside.

The mug's bottom was coated in a layer of dust.

Yun internally screamed in frustration, him being too weak to be vocal anymore.

Looking back at the man who carried him all the way here, he saw that the ninja was smiling. The nerve of some people. To take joy in his suffering.

Yun crawled back to the basket and collapsed over it, staring out at nothing with blank eyes, and coughed.

…..

The first few months were frustrating, to say the least.

After finally being able to unlock the art of speaking after many trials and sore throats, Yun found out that Chinese apparently wasn't a thing for this man whose name was in Chinese.

"Xin, can you even understand me?"

There was no response. Obviously his Chinese was taken as babbling by Xin, who merely looked at him in interest.

"You are an interesting one. I have never heard such coordinated babbling in my life dealing with children."

"What did you say? I can't understand you." Yun said in Chinese, desperately.

"Is it customary for children to speak in their own secret language?" the man mused, a fleeting smile crossing over his face.

Yun sighed and continued drinking the rice porridge he was given.

At least he could move correctly now. Walking was still too much for his weak legs, but soon he would be able to do it!

Eventually he will make it out of the house and find a community that speaks Chinese!

…

Finally. Finally. After six months and learning how to walk again.

He could communicate.

Starting by mimicking this strange new language, Yun eventually proved himself intelligent enough to learn how to speak.

"Rice." Xin said, pointing at a bowl of the stuff.

"Ri-ke."

"No. Rice. R-i-c-e."

"Rite?"

"Rice."

"Ripe?"

Well, at least he was making progress.

…..

The issue of speech was resolved after another unknown number of weeks. Conquering his accent, Yun spoke the language of this strange place and observed the various unfamiliar farming tools at work, sitting on barrels and haystacks as Xin tilted the fields once more, after a grueling and boring winter.

Occasionally, Xin left the farm, carrying bags of rice and returning with boxes of unknown substances, which would be put near the machines that ran the process of unshelling the rice before it was put in the bags to sell. The lights came back on, though through unknown means. Yun had studied generators in his old life, and there was no obnoxious hum of an oil engine or any means of wire connection between this little farm and the outside world. He would know that, having inspected every inch around the house and the floor in his infinite boredom. Yun still couldn't read the books that his diminutive height could reach, and with the symbols on the books, looked to be useless to me anyways.

The poor excuses for books were math books. For a person that had already finished calculus, learning math was pretty much obsolete for him.

Still, he helped around the farm. Acting way more mature than any one and a half year old would be, he used his stubby little fingers and planted the rice crops in a professional way, nagging Xin into dumping water in the farm and actually placing each individual seedling, and not just toss them haphazardly into the soil and bury them in more soil.

Seriously, Xin was a bad farmer. He had to rely on a previously blind twenty year old engineering student to help him increase his yields.

To the surprise of Xin, the incessant prattling of the need to flood the "rice patties" was actually turning out to be a very profitable decision. The crops grew faster and better, allowing Xin to sell more of it and bring back more fuel for the lights and more bits of cloth.

Yun would often go into the bamboo forest (though never out of sight of Xin, who hung near him and watched over him with his blindfolded eyes that made Yun think he was some sort of owl.).

For Xin, he was even more pleasantly surprised when he discovered that Yun wasn't going into the forest to land face first into mud puddles. Yun simply went out into the bamboo forest to s it around and look at the sky, with an expression that reminded Xin of high security Atlas prisoners looking at the sky for the first time in years.

Which was true, in Yun's case.

When asked about why he insisted on spending so much time outside, Yun just sighed and continued looking at the clouds.

…..

Yun was very confused about many things.

Where was he? Why was he named after clouds? Was it just random chance because people here didn't speak Chinese? And how was he reborn?

These questions frequented his mind after he regained basic functions.

How was he alive? He remembered being shoved into a river, and drowning…

And waking up in some sort of basket, chased by creatures that sounded like wolves and wanted to kill me.

Great start.

This place, wherever it was, was very rural. However, there were still lanterns that hung from the ceiling and ran on an unknown power source. There was bartering in this world, seen from Xin trading rice for other mysterious goods and black cloth.

So. Advanced technology. Creatures trying to kill everybody. Helicopters and airships. A bartering system. Mysterious energy source.

A slightly better start.

At least Yun had time. He was still too young to read most of the books on the shelves, according to Xin. He said that Yun was too young and wouldn't understand them, so he grumbled internally and tried to act like a mature one year old.

Something told Yun that telling Xin he was a twenty year old man trapped in a baby's body wasn't going to bode well and make the ninja in question doubt his sanity. Or his ears.

Eventually, he found a map. But what he saw was utterly confounding.

There was no Russia on top of China. Hell, there wasn't even a China or ZhongGuo on the map! Given that he never physically saw a world map, he gave it the benefit of the doubt and began looking for capital cities. And Beijing, Washington DC, and Moscow were nowhere on the map. Most of the cities sounded like it came from those weird cartoons played back home, but there were no cities from the entire People's Republic of China that were on that map. If you were putting a city on the map, the pronunciation would at least remain the same.

Putting away the map in one of the Geography for Children series books, Yun went back outside and lay facedown on another haystack, lamenting his life.

An apple was thrown at his head and bounced off to land on another haystack.

"Have an apple." Xin said.

Turning around, Xin went into the secret generator room and deposited the box of mysteries in it. Yun grabbed the apple and began savoring the rare treat. Eating mostly rice for more than a year was soul crushing.

Walking back inside to dwell on his misery on a comfortable surface, he spotted an old book. It didn't have any familiar characters that were on the other books. It was well-hidden too, behind a bookshelf. One would only spot it if you were looking at the bookshelf from a very specific height and angle, requirements that Yun happened to fulfil.

Withdrawing the book and looking past its spine, Yun flipped it open and revealed more strange characters. Tracing the characters, he recognized one as one from back home.

Eyes widening, he traced each character individually, slowly comprehending the text. Though it had been over a year since I had tried to interpret any written Chinese, I could understand the ancient text.

It was a diary.

A diary of somebody like me, from the age of dynasties.

I wasn't alone.

At least, somebody had been in my footsteps before. Trapped in this unfamiliar place.

Walking outside and leaning against a particularly thick stump of bamboo, I read, the green leaves cascading around me, flowing as if they were a whirlwind, and I, the eye of the storm.


	3. A1 C3 Unrestrained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Trauma and some bloodshed.  
> Then agian, it really isn't a rwby fanfic without it right?

**AN: I'm back! And I won't be back for another week!**

**Have fun reading!**

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Exerpt#1 : Xin's Memory Banks: The Mountaintop's Cold

Born in a temple, life was as bland as always. Bland, but exiting.

Wake up with the sun. Sleep when the stars are bright. Spend your days meditating and improving your worth with the staff. Defeat the creatures of darkness that ascend.

Those were the principles that we lived by.

It was the day I would receive my metal staff. My eyes glimmered in excitement as I knelt before the pyre, worshipping light itself. My white robes, warmed by the sun's noon rays, seemingly glowed against the white marble. In one hand I held my old wooden staff, and in the other, a scroll. A proof of my strength and speed written by my mentor.

The wind rustled through our robes, sending a chill on my back. I did not mind it, while my fellow disciplines did not, either.

I was ten then. Still as pure as fallen snow.

Receiving the metal staff, I felt the cold metal in my hands. My heart beat fast. This was my next step in my journey to the upper echelons of the temple, defenders of the mountain and monks sworn to protect all that is right.

Every day was spent in our turmoil to be better, to better serve the god of light. Me, especially. My faith was firmer than all, a monk finding me in the forest, wrapped in blankets, after he defeated four King Taijitus (enormous two headed devil snakes) after a lengthy battle. How I was not dead could only be described as a miracle ordained by a god.

That night, after the candles were extinguished and the stars shone bright once more, I crept into the courtyard to practice with my new staff. Sharper and deadlier, yet heavier than my wooden staff, I practiced swinging the staff and employing basic moves.

Then, I heard the sound of chanting. Deep and menacing, it just didn't feel right.

Creeping towards the sound, I discovered it was coming from the archpriest's abode. Stabbing my staff into the wooden walls, I climbed onto it and jumped, pulling the staff out of the wood as I did. Landing on a roof of brick tiles, I lay down and removed one cautiously, peeking at the happenings inside.

What I saw was horrifying. The archpriest knelt before an orb floating in midair, tentacles of red branching out of its dark base. Behind the priest knelt more monks in similar attire, as a woman's voice came from the creature.

Terrified, I jumped from the building and ran to the grandmaster of our order and reported the gathering. Waiting in the office, he returned with an ashen face. Shutting the traitors in their building, the alarm was sounded, and the grandmaster rallied our brothers to the cause. Every initiate, every apprentice, was called to arms.

The doors to the archpriest's quarters were bust open and the traitors inside flooded out, wearing headbands. Instead of attacking the leaders of our group, they instead attacked the children in the crowd.

Everything was chaotic. A lantern was knocked over and lit fire to the monastery. Between the flames and the blood spilling in all directions as light and dark fought, as brothers and sisters who laughed and ate together by day cut each other's flesh at night.

It was our innocence that caused our downfall.

Unafraid to kill, the dark monks went for the vitals as the righteous ones only sought to cripple them.

At last, stabbed through the arm, crimson soaking through my normally pristine robes, I knelt, bleeding, using my staff to support myself and stop me from collapsing.

…

"How do you beat an enemy, master?" A seven-year-old me asked.

"In order to beat the enemy, Xin, you have to become it." My master said sadly. "That is why there is no end to the darkness in the world, for people do not wish to delve to the level of the Grimm. To beat somebody, you have to fight them tooth and nail, learning their tactics and flinging it back at them."

I merely looked at him in curiosity.

"When have you fought another person?"

My master sighed once more.

"I hope you will never have to."

I returned to my studies, though the doubt remained seeded in my mind.

…

My master lay bleeding behind the crowd of monks leering down at my struggling figure, the archpriest before them.

"In order to beat the enemy, Xin, you have to become it."

My eyes snapped open with new conviction. Holding my bleeding arm, I struggled to stand. The staff in the weakened arm was held with greater conviction.

I roared, riding on the fury of losing everything I knew, of my crumbling view of the world.

"That is why there is no end to the darkness in the world, for people do not wish to delve to the level of the Grimm."

The Grimm aimed only to kill, and to defeat these Grimm in human skin, I would do so as well.

"To beat somebody, you have to fight them tooth and nail, learning their tactics and flinging it back at them."

There would be no more restrictions. There would be no more mercy.

A blue field shimmered over me, filling me with adrenaline as I pulled the metal staff impaling me out of myself, sending an arc of blood at the enemy. The same field filled me with energy as I rushed at the crowd.

"When have you fought another person?"

Time seemed to slow down as the archpriest smiled sadistically and swung his staff at me. I looked at him and saw one thing: his throat.

"I hope you will never have to."

I knew now.

Throwing my staff, I impaled him. My arm, laced with tendrils of blue, seemed to guide my aim as the staff flew out of my hand and hit him.

Time sped up again. The man looked at the staff protruding out of his throat in shock and fell to his knees and keeled over. Pulling my staff out of his would, I held it out at an angle and swept a steely gaze over the rest of the traitors. They stepped back in fear.

With a feral roar, my body flared with blue once more as I leapt into their midst.

….

One boy left the burning temple. Cloak soaked in crimson and holding a staff at an angle to his body, he left a trail of red where he walked, blood dripping from the sharp metal point.

Behind him, a pile of bodies wearing previously white robes and black headbands lay, eyes open yet unseeing, wounds spilling more blood from their throats.

And by the gods, it was cold.

…..

…..

The book was exceedingly boring.

Reading it had taken so long too. By the time he was four, he had finished just half of it. The diary taught one how to breathe to strengthen the body, detailed the life of a farmer, and gave out scattered tips of meditation and martial art guidance. The last bit was interesting, but it wasn't like he needed to fight or anything.

"Why would I need any of that?" Yun thought, placing his head in his hands.

Yun was here to fulfil his dreams of being an engineer, sightseeing, and probably invent a thing or two. He wasn't here to become some wannabe marital artist!

Right now, Yun couldn't go off the farm without the man noticing and probably dragging him back. There were the demon creatures that prowled around, after all.

So now arose the question.

Why was Yun being kept on this farm?

Surely it wasn't for economic benefits. From what he had seen, Xin was struggling to keep the lights on with buying the mysterious energy sources. Yun probably had no parents left alive, or there would be a much more enthusiastic father taking care of him instead of Xin.

Not that he was complaining. Xin's obliviousness to social (or in this case, biological) norms only worked in Yun's favor to conceal the fact that he wasn't exactly the most normal person.

Looking into the water of the rice fields, he looked at his features. A young face with white hair and shining silver eyes, almost too bright and seemingly as reflective as a mirror.

His eyes were too bright in his last life too, his condition being having an eye that couldn't absorb any light waves due to an eye color that was too bright, namely silver. It was rare, but things like silver eyes did happen on earth occasionally.

"At least one thing carried over from my last life. My crappy eye color." Yun thought, idly staring into the pond, the white clouds floating across the surface. A lone black cloud sped through its white comrades.

And then it turned back on its path and began circling the pond.

Wait a second. Clouds aren't pitch black. Nor can they circle ponds.

Looking up, you saw a dark, birdlike shape above.

With a screech, it dived.

Xin was off selling rice and buying materials. Yun, being the one-and-a-half year old he was, panicked and ran for shelter.

What could a toddler to against an avian enemy?

For the first time in this world, Yun realized that the world was just out to kill him. From the wolves then to the bird now, Yun had been completely helpless.

If only there was a way for him to get stronger.

Oh wait.

The diary.

Yun found the book again, digging through the granary and finding the book where you hid it: under a grain sack.

Outside, the bird shrieked, and what sounded like rain peppered the house. The beating of the bird's wings were getting increasingly louder.

Flipping open the book, Yun read the section about breath techniques once more.

'Focus on your breathing. Slow it and empty your mind. Assume the meditative stance, then focus on the flow of your blood. Note how you are participating in a cycle, inhale and exhale. When this cycle is broken, your life will be broken in conjunction.

Manipulate this cycle to your advantage. The air itself gives us life, and channel its energy-'

Focusing on the stance and following the words of the ancients, Yun slowly drew a breath. Focusing on a cycle, of light and dark, Yun felt a sliver of warmth leave his lungs and enter his veins, beginning to flow in his body. Continuing to breathe in and out, speeding up the cycle and drawing in more warmth, he concentrated on the flow of it through the veins. Then, following instructions, he bought his hands out and clasped them together, feeling two flows of the warmth gather together and coil into my abdomen.

Opening my eyes, Yun felt the world suddenly sharpen a he breathed once more. Whatever limb Yun moved, whatever muscle he flexed, he felt the mysterious warmth leave its niche in the body and flow to the area of movement, enhancing the motion.

Great. he managed to gain a sensory illusion.

Now, preparing to fight the bird. What would suffice as a weapon?

Yun only knew one thing about weapons.

Stick 'em with the pointy end.

Seeing a sharp bamboo stick, he grabbed it and grasped it firmly in his hands.

The whole granary shook. Something slammed down and dented the tin roof. The flapping grew fainter as Yun looked upwards nervously.

Looking for cover from whatever that thing was, Yun dove into the pile of rice bags.

There was a loud clang. The walls shook once more as another dent occurred on the tin roof, a tear beginning to show in the metal sheets.

His head peeking out of the pile of rice, he saw the visage of his attacker.

Two beady, distinctly avian red eyes staring at him with a white backdrop. Yun stared back, not believing that such a demon would prowl Earth.

"It's official, then. I'm very far from home. I may as well be off world right now." Yun thought.

There was no way he was going to kill that thing. It dented metal with its beak or claws! And he was four years old! This creature clearly could fly, and with his stubby little legs and flimsy arms, he had no way of outrunning the beast or slay the beast in a direct confrontation.

The only way to live was to outsmart the beast. But how was he even going to get out of the house?

Wait a second, did he even need to exit the house?

This house was made of solid concrete, built to weather the occasional storms and floods that came over this area. Apparently once every decade, according to the talk of the "locals" (the inhabitants of the city Xin always visited), the mountain was flooded in rain. It did wonders for the soil but for the rest of the place, not so much. Yun Xin eventually realized the reason that the houses and the generator rooms were so secure and were placed on small hilltops.

"With the slanted terrain, if a bird were to be grounded, it would be very difficult to take off at a forty five degree angle. That is, if the doorframe is strong enough." Yun concluded

With a new plan that could be the end to his four year existence on this new world, Yun pushed open the metal door and threw an unsharpened bamboo rod at a demon.

Finally diverting its attention from wrecking the roof and looking at Yun, the bird ascended with a great flap of its wings and dived down at Yun.

Luckily for Yun, his flank was protected by metal fence and his back was protected by the house. The bird only had one angle of attack, and the bird took it.

Yun threw himself backwards as the bird attacked him, obsidian black beak pointed straight at him.

The beast's skull fit squarely through the doorway as the rest of the bird's body thumped against the walls of the building, making a rooftile fall down and almost hit Yun in the head.

"Now what?" Thought Yun.

He literally had no method of hurting the trapped bird. Then he looked at the metal roof tile.

It had a sharp edge.

…..

When Xin returned from the supply run, he saw the body of a avian monster, more commonly known as a nevermore, protruding out of the granary. A sound that reminded him of the smack of metal on flesh from his active days sounded from the building, followed by indignant squawking and deafening screeching. Still, the sounds continued.

Xin drew his staff and approached the trapped bird, curious as to how the bird got into this situation in the first place.

Avoiding the sharp ends of Nevermore feather, Xin climbed up the corpse, located where the "heart" would be in the demon, and stabbed it. As the corpse of the bird disintegrated, he was greeted with the sight of Yun holding a bent tin roof tile, black blood splattered all over his body. His hands were raw red, presumably because he held such an awkward weapon for a very long time.

"Oh hey, Uncle Xin. I need you to teach me how to fight."

"Why? How? When?" Xin asked, questioning the meaning of life after his mind processed the fact that a dust dammed*1 four year old managed to incapacitate a nevermore and proceeded to beat the living crap out of the bird with a roof tile of all things.

"Saw the bird trying to kill me. Lured it into swooping down at me by throwing a bamboo stick at it. About two hours ago." Yun said with a cheeky smile.

Honestly, the kid was really freaky at times.

Was this normal for a child?

Xin had long since forgot what was normal, with a coffee addicted wizard with several thousand years worth of PTSD, another coffee addicted professor that could seemingly teleport short distances, and a man who managed to kill beowolves with butter as colleagues.

….

Footnote: 1: Just an alternative to goddamn in Remnant, for those relatively new to rwby fanfic lingo


	4. A1 C4 Untouchable

**Author's note:**

**Just a typical training montage, along with the explanation of Chi's properties and stuff.**

**In short, this is a chapter about Xin not remembering anything and how Chi can be used. Currently, it can be infused into projectiles to make them hit harder, infused into weapons to make them stronger, and used to protect the body from blows and also enhance movement and the senses. The effect's magnitude depends on the wielder's reserves.**

**Also, every time the protagonist meditates, they're actually increasing their Chi's max reserves. Chi naturally regenerates on its own but meditation helps increase the rate. In short, meditation is just strengthening Chi.**

**A crash course on Chi and how it's used in a bunch of Chinese action novels!**

**Don't ask why I read them.**

**Anyways, enjoy the chapter, favorite, follow, and review!**

**-Spirit**

Excerpt #2: Old memories: School

School was a place of beauty. It was a place of education, of air that smelled like knowledge (the scent of old books).

And there were nine classrooms in total. For grades one through nine.

Each classroom had sixty people in them. And the room itself was made for twenty people.

It would be fine. Everybody could just cram in and get rid of the desks.

Except it wasn't. The classroom turned into a barrel of monkeys. Nobody wanted to be there, except for a select few people in a corner.

The rest of the room descended into a chaos of fistfights, a warzone of paper planes, and gossip circles. All of which made an incredible amount of noise. The teacher had to use a half-broken bullhorn to speak, and the whiteboard was constantly peppered with paper balls and mud.

This was rural Anhui. Who needed an education? All you needed was your brawn, a few acres of land, and rice seedlings.

Still, a few of us pushed on through the education system. Scattered through the grades, we were deemed as the town's "deserters" as we tried to escape these backwoods.

In third grade, things went from bad to worse for me.

Children were quick to learn the meaning of cruelty and prejudice.

Sitting in the corner, I tried to listen to the lecture, memorizing the facts, while being pelted with spitballs, paper planes, and with classmates surrounding me, taunting and jeering.

There were three types of people. There were the ones who stood up to me. They were put down pretty fast. There were the bullies themselves, the thrower of punches and the wardens of misery. And there were the quiet sympathizers, willing to help me out after a particularly hard smackdown.

At first, these attempts were quelled by concerned parents. Eventually, the parents gave up on disciplining their children and just cast sympathetic glances at me.

Not that I knew.

For me, every day was just a struggle to lethargically stumble into the next, trying to focus on facts.

I forgot the day I decided to take up an impossible dream: engineering.

How could a blind person design anything? You can't even write well. They said.

I was going to prove them wrong.

Enlisting the help of a friend, he traced the components of characters on my palm as I tried to get the spacing between the lines and characters correct, memorizing the spacial dimensions that was involved in writing normally. After learning about a hundred characters, I memorized the spacing and had a good feel for how a character was structured, and the rest of the information came easily.

I still remembered how the teacher made surprised sputtering noises when I submitted an essay on paper instead of presenting it verbally.

And I had the sense that he was actually proud of me.

For the second time in my life, I smiled an honest smile.

…

….

Out in the woods, Yun stood excitedly.

It was apparently his fifth year on this farm and Xin promised him that he would be taught how to fight "when he was half a decade old".

This past year, he concentrated on breath techniques and meditation, along with memorizing pressure points. He found out that the breath technique produced the warm flow he managed to create before his nevermore bashing was actually energy enhancing his movement. He dubbed it Chi, since it was energy born from meditation and breath. It did sound like it came out of a cartoon from earth, but it was easier than calling the energy "warm meditation product that makes me stronger and stuff".

Chi was a versatile weapon. Its purpose was to protect oneself and also attack enemies. If one were to use a Chi-enhanced blow to strike an opponent, Chi would be drained from the attacker and enter the blood flow of the enemy, where it would corrode their internal organs over a short period of time on top of being a stronger attack. If applied through a pressure point, it could be used to paralyze or knock unconscious.

Yun had yet to move onto studying martial arts. It was too difficult for his physique as of now.

Xin arrived soundlessly; his presence only indicated by a sudden appearance of a shadow behind Yun.

"You want to learn how to fight." Xin stated without emotion.

Yun nodded eagerly. "I need to be strong to survive."

"Then I will teach you."

Yun fist pumped and a big smile came on his face.

"So what are we going to do first?"

His question was ignored.

"However, I am not very good at teaching people how to fight. Mainly because I forgot how."

Xin suddenly held out his staff as if to attack Yun, who looked at Xin in confusion.

"Still, I have come up with an idea."

"What is it?"

"I will hit you."

Yun felt his stomach turn as he backed away slowly.

"And you will run away, or defend yourself." Xin said, creeping forwards. "Because when you get hit enough, you will eventually learn how not to get hit. That is all I can teach you."

Yun turned and ran as if the devil were on his tail. He knew how deadly Xin was. Channeling his Chi, he applied it to his legs to enhance his speed.

It was not enough.

Xin ran up a tree and jumped into the air after Yun, using his robes as a rudimentary paraglider in his pursuit of Yun. Bamboo was felled by slashes of the staff for being obstacles in the most direct route to taking Yun down.

Yun didn't know what hit him as a sharp pain appeared on his back and he fell face first into the dirt.

Xin appeared in front of him the next moment, face still neutral and staff tucked away in his crossed arms.

"Again." Xin said.

Yun could only groan.

…

That day, Yun learned that Xin's hearing was phenomenal and he could see as well as a falcon regardless of his blindfold.

He had tried hiding in a bird's nest. Hiding in foliage. Holding his breath under a river by supplementing his Chi as oxygen (Don't ask him how it worked. The diary / guidebook said it just did.). He even ran back into the granary and waited, shaking, as Xin found him under a pile of rice bags and hit him, once more, in the back, as he struggled to escape.

Also, Xin was devastatingly brutal. His approach to literally everything was take the quickest path possible. And when it meant jumping off a cliff and into a river to find a Yun that was trying to mimic a rock in the riverbed, it meant jumping off a cliff and freefalling into the water. Simple as that.

It was also the most affective approach. Logically, what better way was there to stop a man from running away (without permanently crippling him) than hitting him with a butt of a staff in the back of the knees?

There was none.

….

It was rather sad to watch a child struggle with bruises and ask how a ninja weathered a fifty meter fall without injury.

It was rather hilarious to watch the child rage when the response was "I forgot".

This training continued on for four years, during which the child grew a good two feet and managed to survive up to ten minutes of the ninja's "teachings", parrying a few blows and dodging the rest with the grace of a dead fish, often channeling Chi to boost his muscles and flopping over many sweeping blows and faceplant to avoid stabs to the face.

For Xin, it was like trying to catch a crippled fly that should have been squashed long ago but still took to the air often enough for it to evade the flyswatter. For Yun, it was a stress inducing experience as his Chi and muscles worked furiously to avoid the stick of death.

And when the nine-year-old Yun tried to fight back, it was frustrating to see how Xin dodged literally everything by a hair's breadth. He would internally scream in frustration as each Chi enhanced strike to the pressure points of the ninja missed as the man landed a painful hit on his back.

Though it wasn't obvious, Yun was getting tougher, faster, and stronger. He would be able to block a strike by channeling it to the strike point. This technique only mitigated the damage completely if the blow struck his limbs, but it still provided a cushioning force for an attack to his abdomen. And he was putting up a better fight, even if he fails every single time and his only method of defense is either tanking the blow or using the time honored method of putting himself in an extremely compromising position that barely classifies as dodging.

And at the same time, he was doubting his sanity in continuing this daily tirade of madness.

….

It was a couple days later, when Yun hit the eleven minute mark.

"Soon, when you survive fifteen minutes, you will then make your own weapons. You can use the forge in the generator room-"

"I've been meaning to ask for a long time, but how does the generator work?" Yun asked, his head tilted in curiosity.

"It runs on dust."

"Dust? Like the stuff in the air that refracts light and allows us to see and stuff?"

"No. Dust. Crystals and gems that embody the elements. The lights run on lightning dust and forges run on crude fire dust."

"Wow. That is seriously cool. Is it possible to use it in combat?"

"Yes, but I forgot how."

Yun facepalmed. This was how a lot of their conversations ended these days. Xin told Yun that he had suffered a severe wound in his day that resulted in severe memory loss. Only bits and pieces remained of his memory of his first four decades of life.

He also couldn't really feel emotion. Anything he did feel was dulled quickly.

It was sad, like viewing the world through a grayed out lenses. Like losing a sense and an aspect of life.

Yun did know and sympathize, though he pretended not to understand. It wasn't like he lost anything important that he could remember. In this lifetime anyways.

Finally stumbling back onto the bed, Xin heading to the granaries and generator room to boil rice, Yun sank into meditation mode. It helped him build up more Chi in his reserves and also healed his wounds at a faster pace.

Yun still didn't understand how Xin would be able to do what he did without breath techniques. When asking him about it a year ago, Xin merely furrowed his brow in confusion and asked "what is this breath technique?"

And occasionally, when Yun looked at Xin after landing from an extremely high fall, he swore he could see a blue shimmer on his black robes. What was this other power?

None of the books said anything about a force that protected its host and emitted light at the same time. Also, it was scientifically impossible.

Even if being reborn into an infant's body would also be considered scientifically impossible.

His thought process continued as he built up his Chi slowly, inhaling and converting the energy into a warmth which pulsed through his body, healing his wounds, before gathering in his joined hands to complete the cycle and rest in his abdomen. This process was repeated multiple times before the pains vanished and the bruises faded slightly.

After meditation, dinner was ready. Xin walked out, holding two bowls of rice with some dried vegetables on it.

It was utterly disgusting. Despite being great at combat and surviving impossible situations, Xin wasn't worth his salt in cooking. Literally.

Xin probably forgot to put salt in about one third of the meals.

At least Xin was good at sewing, making Yun two sets of black robes from the fabric he bought every year to replace the sets that became either too small or too torn up from training.

After swallowing the abomination against culinary arts, Yun sighed and prepared himself for the dreaded evening training.

Where he would go out in the forest and hide from Xin, who would wear all black and try to hunt Yun, with his hyperreflective eyes and white hair, things that were easily visible even in the dark.

He decided to just run into the forest now. Better get a head start.

Through the clumps of bamboo and stumbling over rocks, Yun turned back to his old method of vibration-based echolocation to navigate in the dark. He channeled Chi to the head, since that usually helped with the senses, tuning out other inputs and making him focus on hearing alone.

And there it was.

A flap of cloth coming from the left.

Yun began bolting in the other direction, trying to sense the vibrations that his quiet footsteps sent into the ground, making the plants and pebbles in the area shake.

The sound of a pebble clattering on the ground reached his ears. Xin was much closer now.

Oh how Yun wished that the black robes Xin made for him had a hood. With a Chi-assisted jump, he leapt up and grabbed a stalk of bamboo, kicked off on it, and with the guide of the moonlight and the sound of rustling leaves, pounced towards another stalk.

Yun was parkouring on bamboo.

It took a while for him to train his reflexes to adjust to the irregularity of each plant and the fast-paced motion, but eventually his balance improved enough for him to parkour and travel at three quarters of Xin's speed.

Still, it wasn't fast enough. Yun could hear Xin gaining on him, the rustle of cloth getting closer and closer.

He reached a moonlit clearing. There was nothing to grab and parkour from.

Damn.

He grabbed a length of dried bamboo, about eight inches long, and prepared to fight. Yun channeled his Chi into his makeshift weapon, the mysterious energy somehow strengthening it. According to the diary, infusing Chi into a material made it four times stronger. And it was surprisingly accurate, despite there being no scientific explanation for how life energy flowed into a dead object.

Xin appeared behind him and swung his staff, the metal implement whistling through the air. Yun spun on one foot and blocked the bow with the bamboo, then crouched and swept a Chi strengthened leg across the ground. Xin dodged the attack, twisted in midair, and stabbed down with his staff once more. Yun hit the shaft of the weapon with his stick, pushing aside the attack and pushed upwards with his other leg, making him glide across the clearing. Grabbing the base of a bamboo plant, Yun swung back at Xin, another Chi infused blow prepared. Xin hit Yun's leg with the staff, grabbed his arm, and slammed him into the ground, then prepared to finish him off with the customary hit to the back.

Yun sighed inwardly "Time to flop like a dead fish again."

Xin's blow was dodged by Yun, who rolled backwards. When another strike was aimed at his legs, Yun instead raised his legs up and slammed them down on the earth in a Chi boosted movement, the impact propelling him to do a flip over the strike. Yun twisted in midair and tucked in his torso, narrowly avoiding another slash, before hitting the ground and pushing himself off the ground by a foot to avoid a low sweeping blow.

Flip. Roll. Duck. Flop. Leap. Parry. Strike. Repeat.

Yun floundered through close combat with Xin, drops of sweat trickling from his hairline. His white hair was laced with dirt and his robes had splotches of mud on it. His bamboo weapon was cracking slowly.

In an effort to turn the tides, Yun crushed the weapon and threw the shards at Xin. Somehow, anything thrown from a Chi enhanced throw would also channel Chi, despite not being in physical contact with the source. Xin spun his staff at an angle to deflect the projectiles as Yun darted in from behind and tried to land a palm strike on the man's back.

His hand was caught and he was lifted over Xin's head and slammed into the earth. His Chi worked overtime to protect him from the impact.

A strike on his back crushed his "fighting spirit" and he collapsed into the ground.

Xin helped him up.

"Eleven minutes and twenty seconds. You're improving fast."

The robed duo walked back to the house, one silently, one stumbling and complaining about back problems.

A typical night in a farm out in the middle of nowhere.

From the trees, a raven watched the scene, curious.


	5. A1 C5 Unanchored

**AN: I'm back! And I finished a ton of exams!**

**No more shall I toil on the fields of statistics!**

**A bright future awaits me for the next three months.**

**The less said about the next year the better.**

**Excerpt 3: Old Memories: Rice Fields**

The fields of rice were beautiful. Yellow stalks of ripened grain floated over an ocean of green stalks and leaves. The sun shown warmly down on the land, though the water in the field still remained as cool as a patch of shade. One could run through the endless acre of green and yellow forever, footsteps stirring up ripples through the fields as one chases the clouds.

The teacher was very confused when he read this essay.

"How do you even know what color the rice fields are?" He asked.

"There's this thing called other people in the world, who can speak and describe stuff to me. I just took their descriptions and fused it into this amalgamation." I shrugged, walking out of the empty classroom.

It was a summer Sunday. Kids were doing absolutely nothing. The rice fields grew under the nourishment of the sun.

Why was I writing essays in the summer?

I was bored.

What else was I supposed to do? Run in the rice fields like I described in my essay? I can't even weed the fields like every other farmer is because I can't see them in the first place! I would rather just take a nap or something.

Arriving at home, nobody was in the house. I fumbled for the doorknob and struggled to insert the key, then fell into the welcome carpet, courtesy of the door suddenly unlocking. Happenings like these were not uncommon and I was used to it by now.

Grabbing onto the umbrella rack (salvaged from the junkyard by my parents), I hoisted myself up and stepped three steps in front and five steps to the right, kicked open my room's door, and collapsed on the mattress.

I picked the worst room in the house. The lights were broken, and the paint was peeling. There were no windows. None of those things made a difference to me. As long as it was quiet, and there was a desk, a chair, and a bed, I was happy with it.

Finding the drawer on my desk, I found my charging MP3 player, found the worn earbuds, and listened to comedy shows to pass the time. The two comedians joked and insulted each other in a playful manner as the audience roared in laughter in the background.

Listening to the sounds of happiness, I fell asleep.

A typical day in the summer.

Nothing exiting happened. Nothing new happened. Basically nobody spoke to me. It was just an average day.

And it was beautiful.

…

Xin went on another supply run today. There would be no training today, the journey to the nearest town half a day's sprint from the farm.

Yun decided to relax today. Reading the tiny words on the diary, Yun read about the early days of this new world, when everything was just a collection of settlements and bandits roamed the land. The diary was filled with tales that were about three hundred words long about how he took down the bandits, which Yun thought hard about to visualize the martial art and Chi techniques that were used and how they were applied.

"Huh. Who knows that wielding wooden spoons as weapons actually intimidates most bandits?" Yun said to himself as he read, sitting on a mossy rock and leaning against a clump of bamboo while passively channeling my Chi and experimented with its flow in the body.

Then, Yun heard a distant rattle of fabric.

"Oh, god. Is Xin is planning his annual assassination attempt?" Yun muttered, tucking the book into his robes and getting in a ready stance.

"Come out now, Xin! I know you went on that hypothetical supply run just to lower my guard! You pulled this off last year and the year before that."

And then somebody moved.

The rustle of cloth sounded behind me as the rasp of a blade drawn reached my ears.

Without turning, Yun grabbed the blade with a reinforced hand, stepped to the right, and pulled it forward. The blade left a scratch, but nothing deep enough to be serious.

Wait, blade?

Xin didn't have a blade.

Yun looked at the figure again.

Wow. he was wrong to think this person was Xin.

First of all, black hair. Xin has grey hair because he's in his seventies.

Second of all, wrong gender. A fact made obvious due to two very obvious assets.

Third, wrong color scheme. While Xin was pure black, this woman was red and black.

Fourth, wrong weapon and accessories. While Xin had a black headband and metal staff, the mystery woman had a white and red mask that reminded me of the devil bird he almost bashed to death when he was four. The weapon was a red katana, and the sheath was too large for the blade and was pure black except for a small cylinder of rainbow. She also wore red forearm guards.

"Oh god, please don't murder me!" Yun screamed, a desperate expression on his face as he crouched into a fighter's stance once more.

"You… have silver eyes."

"Why does that even matter?" Yun asked, seriously confused. Was silver eyes not a genetic disease in this world?"

….

Raven looked at the boy in front of her. With shining silver eyes and scraggly white hair waving in the wind, he also shared disturbingly similar looks with Ozpin. He wore black robes with multiple tears at the edges of his tunic.

A very mistralian look.

Without speaking, she leveled her katana at his throat.

The boy gulped and stepped back.

Raven rushed forth and swung her katana in a deadly arc, with a force that could shatter boulders and speed that rivaled a bullet.

The boy merely sidestepped it and attempted to hit her with a palm strike. Raven blocked this with the flat of her blade, only to feel some force burn her hand, as if something was dismantling it from the inside. Channeling aura and pushing the boy away, she looked at her hand to analyze what was wrong.

"What the hell did this boy just do?" Raven wondered.

Inspecting her hand, the appendage in question was now bright red, the internal bleeding in her palm evident. Her red aura flared and healed the wound as she turned and received a kick directly in the face.

Apparently instead of stumbling and falling to the ground from Raven's push, the boy instead used the force to glide away, sling himself back by grabbing a shoot of bamboo and redirecting the momentum.

Raven staggered from the blow and barely bought her blade up to bat away another fist headed for her stomach.

The boy used the force again to move the right, crouched low, and chopped Raven in the back of her knees. The same mysterious force came and her knee buckled in agony. Her katana was swung backwards in an effort to catch the boy off guard, but he caught the blade (again), lifted Raven over his head with the assistance of the force from the swing, and slammed her into the ground, then wrenched her weapon out of her grasp then attempted to stomp on her wrist, only for Raven to roll out of the way, vault over the boy, grab her weapon, and sheath it once more. Some device on the sheath whirred and the blade came out blue instead of red.

…

Yun was internally screaming as the mysterious lady attacked him. Years of combat training came back to him as he sidestepped the blow and aimed a palm strike at her back, wanting to end the battle fast with a quick Chi infused blow.

The woman parried the blow, and the two competed in strength for a while, only for Yun to send a channel of offensive Chi down the woman's blade, hopefully hurting her palm enough for her to drop the blade.

It didn't work. The woman flared red and pushed Yun away, giving him more velocity, albeit in the opposite direction of his opponent.

If there was one thing fighting Xin taught him, it was to always keep moving and use your momentum to your advantage in getting places and hitting your opponent. Taking his increased speed as an advantage, Yun glided backwards and grabbed the nearest thing (bamboo) and swung himself back at the woman, changing the direction of his velocity and catching her off guard.

The kick made a satisfying thump as his boot met her face.

She stumbled backwards, seemingly disoriented. Good. Yun took this chance to aim another blow at her stomach, rushing up and punching with an enhanced fist. The woman batted away the blow, pushing him to her flank.

Excellent. Yun cheered internally as he was able to strike the back of her knee, channeling more offensive Chi into her body to hopefully disorient her with pain.

A katana was swung at him. Pulling a leaf from Xin's book, he grabbed the blade with a reinforced hand, borrowed some momentum from the katana swing, and, ignoring the pain that was the blade biting into his flesh, lifted her over his head. Turning, he threw her down on the dirt and wrenched the katana from her grasp. Trying to incapacitate her, Yun planned to incapacitate her by applying offensive Chi to the major veins on her wrist, halting blood flow on one side of the body and temporarily paralyzing her.

The attack failed miserably. The lady was fast. She rolled out of the way of the attack, retrieved the katana he threw aside, and resumed a combat stance, applying something to her blade and turning it blue.

"Please don't kill me! Why are you even doing this? Who are you?" Yun asked desperately. The woman said nothing as she rushed at him, katana pointed straight towards his throat.

Yun couldn't keep taking damage by grabbing the woman's katana. He needed a weapon. Punching a bamboo plant and grabbing the long rod, he now had a rudimentary staff. Copying Xin's stance. Yun kicked off the ground and glided towards the lady.

Parrying the thrust of the katana, Yun went with the classic hit to the back, only to realize that his staff was now frozen to the katana. The woman pulled the staff from his hands, somehow shattered the ice, kicked Yun down, and held the blade to his neck.

"…I should have known. Of course blue means ice." Yun sighed, hands held up in surrender.

The hilt of the katana came down on his head and Yun was knocked unconscious.

…..

Yun awoke in some sort of tent. His hands were tied behind his back and he himself was tied to a chair. With a sigh, he channeled his Chi and broke the ropes with the brute strength of his reinforced arms. The fibers of the rope burst as he stood up soundlessly. Dusting himself off, he looked around the tent.

It was just a tent. Bare, with a grass floor and a tiny flap open for daylight to trickle it. It was made of sailors cloth, rainproof and sturdy. The poles were solid wood beams, probably designed to withstand heavy winds as well as be convenient for travel.

He was obviously in hostile territory. Xin definitely didn't own a tent, unless it was in the forbidden generator room and this was an elaborate prank.

Yun leaped to the roof beam and hung down to look outside the tent flap. Men and women with terrible haircuts and wearing leather clothing and with guns strapped to various places sat around fires and played cards.

Yep definitely stereotypical bandit camps. The mysterious diary said as such. Speaking of which, the book in question was still safely stowed in my robes.

"Okay, I'm in a bandit camp. The leader probably knocked me out and dragged me over here. How do I escape? She alone was enough to subjugate me, but now she has a number's advantage. Maybe I could sneak out at night. They think that I'm incapacitated right now." Yun muttered to himself, pacing silently.

"Very subtle. For a child that can fight me to a standstill, you aren't exactly stealthy." A voice said from the tent flap.

"Oh, come on!" Yun said, channeling Chi into his palm and collapsing the tent, trying to disorient whoever was outside. The support beam that was right behind my chair shattered, crumbling into splinters. His eyes widened in shock at the strike's power, but he could not spare another second. Lifting a tent pole, Yun ran out of the fabric death trap and sprinted in the opposite direction. The woman charged after him. The commotion alerted literally everybody in the camp and bandits came out and flooded the clearing that he ran into. Pistols, swords, and guns were pointed at him as the bandits formed a rough circle around him.

Yun froze in the middle of the crowd. "There was no way I'm was getting out of this." He thought.

"Can I get back in that tent now? I kind of regret busting out now." Yun said sheepishly.

The woman laughed and sheathed her katana, then stepped up as if to speak.

"Are you going to say something now about how it was foolish to fight me and the power of the tribe shall vanquish you? That sounds like a typical storybook villain and I don't want the last couple of sentences I hear to be those." Yun said snarkily, trying to seem braver than he actually was.

The woman faltered and lowered a hand that might have been the beginning to a lengthy proclamation.

"That's what I thought. I've read enough books about a group of people ganging up on an unsuspecting teenager that actually living the scenario just seems like a bad rehearsal. Am I rambling again? Sorry, I tend to do that if I'm nervous or in the process of being shot full of holes. Speaking of which, can you not?"

The bandits looked at Yun like he was crazy.

"I'm literally just a nine year old living on a farm in the middle of nowhere! Why in the world did you even attack us? What could you possibly gain? Rice? Our fields? There's free real estate all around these parts!"

Yun paused to take a breath, then resumed ranting.

"Why are you even out here? There's nobody else out here, and you have enough weaponry here to put a city under siege! And don't you think using swords in this day and age is a little too primitive? How are you going to get into melee range of somebody if they're just going to shotgun blast you or something?" Yun continued, slowly backing away towards the crowd. The bandits seemingly considered this statement.

"Why are we here?"

"Where's the loot?"

"It's not like we're running away from authority figures or anything."

"Quiet!" the woman shouted, taking off her mask and throwing it onto the ground.

"How dare you even question my decision? I am the leader of this tribe, and anybody who has objections to being here can try and take my position in a duel!"

The bandits remained silent.

"Good. I can't believe you listened to that brat."

"He's escaping!" Somebody else shouted, pointing at the gate.

Everybody turned and saw a robed figure running towards the gate.

"Get him!" the woman shouted.

The woman transformed into a bird, flew over the walls, and landed in front of the boy. Panic shot through his silver eyes as he turned and saw the multitude of gun-wielding bandits.

Then, Yun came up with an incredibly stupid idea that hopefully worked. He ran straight into the crowd of bandits.

Guns were aimed, and frantic pleas to not shoot could be heard as the boy sped through the crowd of goons, knocking down a select few. The loose dirt was stirred up from the movement and created a haze of suspended earth and a rudimentary smokescreen. Everything was chaos when bandits identified which shadow was friend or foe. A slim shadow danced in this mess, knocking down bandits with Chi applied to pressure points on the neck, a time honored method of taking down people soundlessly.

"Enough of this, you incompetent fools!" the leader shouted. A gust blew over the area, emanating from the woman's katana, her blade now donning a white sheen. Red eyes swept over the battlefield, and widened slightly in shock when she realized that all of her underlings were now unconscious.

Among the pile of bodies, the boy stood with a smirk on his face, fists held up in a brawler's stance.

The two charged at each other once more, into a lengthy battle.

Sheathing her katana and drawing it again, the blade's color changed once more, becoming a bright yellow. Sparks flew from the sword ominously as it was swung relatively slowly, almost baiting Yun into catching the blade with his hands like he had so many times before. However, sensing the static on the katana, Yun chose to dodge with an unceremonious faceplant, falling onto the ground, sweeping the ground with a kick. The attacker stepped back and attempted to stab Yun in the abdomen, only for him to somehow flop int the air like a fish on land, avoiding the blow in the most awkward yet effective method possible. Bringing up the blade, the attacker tried to catch Yun in midair. Yun expelled chi from his hand, forcing his body to move slightly to the right and slow the blade's progress with a stiff local breeze. Spinning with the new force, Yun landed on the ground with a crouch behind the attacker's back and attempted to send Chi into a pressure point with a finger. The woman stepped forward and dodged the blow. Yun halted the attack in time to avoid another blow with the sword. The yellow on the sword chose to wear out at this moment, reverting the blade's color to a burnished black. Choosing this moment to strike, Yun punched the woman with all his strength, only to be met by the flat of the blade. Both pushed to gain the advantage, and were pushed back by each other's forces. The attacker and Yun each stumbled back several meters and charged at each other once more, katanas whistling through the air and black robes flapping from the aerobatics Yun was performing to dodge.

This fight was going to take a while.

What's this? An Omake! A funny little short!

A three year old Yun was very disturbed with something.

Why was he only called Yun?

That wasn't how names worked. Was Yun his first name or his last name? Was it just a nickname? Was he nameless?

He had recalled the white haired, coffee drinking, suit wearing man calling himself something beginning with Yun, but he couldn't recall that day in much detail. Other than the memories of Xin running around and giving him motion sickness, that day was just him living in a basket doing nothing but experimenting with moving.

Determined to end this internal debate, Yun approached Xin.

"What's my full name?" Yun asked. He tried to put on his best 'innocent and clueless child' look, opening his eyes a little more and letting the hyperreflective eyes do their work on supposedly charming the adult. A little head tilt and the look of a curious toddler was completed.

"Your full name is Yun Wu*1. Though I haven't the foggiest idea why you were named that."

Yun Wu? He was named after Fog? And did Xin just not understand or was he making a pun?

"What's your full name then?"

"It's Xin Hui*2."

Yun screamed internally. Yun Wu. Xin Hui. All Chinese phrases that made no sense on this world but were common phrases back home.

Wait a moment. Xin Hui. Containing the color grey. It could reference Xin's dark color scheme. Yun Wu could reference his white hair and his greyish black robes.

Was everybody in this world named after a color?

Yun screamed audibly, burdened with the terrible unintentional pun Xin made about fog and their color referencing names.

Xin was very confused. Was it something he said?

…

1: The Chinese characters for fog.

2: The Chinese characters for grey heart, with the metaphorical interpretation of being disheartened or giving up.

My argument for Yun being able to actually fight Raven for a bit is Raven not taking a nine year old seriously (I mean, who would?). Also, Yun was basically instantly subdued in the first fight, so for salty people in the comments (that one guest), get your facts right! Thanks for pointing out grammar mistakes, though.

During the second fight scene, Yun was just dodging the hits Raven was dishing out, so it's like one of Xin's training sessions, but less intense. (Xin is literally a cyborg robot assassin who has trained Yun for four years, during which Yun has probably learnt nothing but how to dodge. Raven is fast, but is Raven faster than a technologically advanced cyborg? Probably not.)

**AN: Quick Explanation: What is Chi (for those who have not yet understood what it is)**

**Chi is a breathing technique used by many in China. It is used as a self-strengthening technique in temples and for martial arts practitioners. The technique is supposed to actively regulate oxygen flow to go to parts of the body and reinforce them, although not actually to the degree of power in the story. On Remnant, I like to think that Chi is stronger than it would be on Earth because of all the ambient energy one can absorb (Dust, Maiden Power, Salem, Ozpin residue, Magic, etc). Therefore, our protagonist can actually feel Chi as a wave of warmth in the veins.**

**Why don't more people have Chi on Remnant? There aren't any religions like Buddhism or philosophies like Daoism that make people so focused on the balance of nature and life energy and all that. Also, the meditation in Remnant (probably done by huntsmen) is used to focus aura, not blood flow or oxygen flow.**

**What can it do? Chi can be used to strengthen a limb and reinforce a limb so that blades only scratch the surface and cause minor bleeding. It can cushion blunt blows and increase your regeneration rate passively. When meditating, this boost is increased. It can also be applied to pressure points to either heal or cause paralysis or unconsciousness.**

**It could be the gateway to naturally unlocking your aura, because of the focus on your soul and all that. In this story, however, the protagonist is going to get his aura unlocked by somebody else. I don't want to bother anybody with inaccurate fan theories, so I'm just going to keep the deus ex machina count to a minimum and not make our protagonist some saint that receives their power of the soul through meditation, suddenly becoming much stronger and not improving through the years of practice and getting beat up like he is right now. It takes serious dedication to get stronger, and that makes for good character development.**

**My personal theory on aura is that at first people unlocked it during stressful situations, and the chant just appeared because aura was turned into some sort of religion.**

**However, you didn't come here to read about my personal theories.**

**If you did actually want to know my personal opinion, aura is the will to live. Jaune has so much of it because he has a lot to live for, his seven sisters, abnormally large family, and his hopes and dreams. Others have a lot of it because of the desire to survive or the desire for vengeance. Hazel also has a lot of aura(as seen in his rapid regeneration rate and being seemingly invulnerable to attacks), and that could be justified by his desire for vengeance against Ozpin. People unlock aura in stressful situations by themselves because they refuse to die (or something similar), and answering their will to live, their soul would become a protective barrier for them.**

**This is probably wrong but this theory still makes sense to me.**


	6. A1 C6 Unstable

**AN: I'm alive!**

**Finally, we have a chapter where a person from the main RWBY cast is introduced!**

**Hint: Red and Gold**

**AO3 Crosspost note: I notice the extremely cringey chapter titles. I don't have anything better to name them with other than a thethaurus.**

Excerpt 2: Xin's memory banks: Beacon (3rd person)

Xin, traveling on foot from his monetary to the nearest city, was amazed by the organized chaos that was civilization.

People bustling from in and out of buildings. People buying and selling food in the markets.

Wearing a new set of black robes, Xin had walked into the gate, showing a signature medallion from his temple to guarantee his passage. After fifteen minutes, during which the gate consulted with Beacon about the legitimacy of the mark, he was ushered into a room and given an identity for his stay in Vale.

Xin, wandering around, happened to notice many exited teenagers with complex weapons run into one building, a place called "Beacon Recruitment Center". A sign that said walk-in appointments were available shone with a neon light. A video of a man holding a bow saying something (presumably instructions) played.

"A recruitment center, huh?" Xin muttered.

He was a monk that was literally trained to kill things. (The months in the wilds roughing it across continents had hardened him, filling him with experience with both killing grimm and the occasional bandit.)

Might as well make a career out of it.

…

Seventy years in a technologically advanced future, Ruby sneezed before continuing on her rant to Ozpin.

….

Xin walked up to the place, looking around the place. It consisted of a counter, many nice chairs, bookshelves full of books about weapon construction and grimm, and several plotted plants.

He approached the front desk and asked to apply for whatever it was. They checked his identification, raised an eyebrow at his identity, looked at his robes, nodded, gave him a numbered slip of paper, and sat down on a chair and just waited.

And waited.

He was late to the party, metaphorically speaking. Although according to some of the giddy expressions of other teenagers, it may as well be a party.

Sitting there for two hours, during which he tried to read the books (only to realize he had learnt basically everything about simple grim during his travels) his number was finally called.

"Number 120, please come into the examination room."

Xin got up and entered the arena.

The place wasn't all that impressive. Through a well-lit hallway, Xin walked onto an arena. With a decagonal shape, it had hexagonal concrete tiles. The platform was in the center of the room, with chutes on the ceiling. The judges sat behind a glass pane, presumably to be kept out of the way of the battle.

"Beacon applicant Xin Hui, please step up to the arena."

Xin did as he was told, standing in the center of the arena and gripping his staff tightly.

"First Stage Commencing: One level one opponent." A robotic voice said. "The exam is beginning in 3…2…1…."

Chutes on the roof of the room opened, and a robot dropped from the ceiling. It then bent its knees and held out its hands. A staff dropped from the ceiling and it caught it, then held it diagonally in a defensive stance.

Xin smirked. He went through this type of training every day.

Throwing his staff into the air, he jumped and spun in midair, turning his body ninety degrees in the air, and kicked the staff. The sharp end of the simple yet durable weapon streaked through the air and impaled the machine through its throat, the circuitry designed to mimic human veins getting impaled. Electricity pulsed through the wound as the bot powered down and slumped onto the floor. Xin pulled his staff out of the bot and shrugged off the minor shock that hit him as he did.

"Next stage: two combat robots." The announcer said once more.

Two more robots dropped from the ceiling, one wielding a sword and shield while the other wielded a rifle. Xin recognized the ranged robot as the greater threat and ran towards the other robot. He feinted a strike against the robot, prompting it to block with its shield.

That was what Xin wanted the robot to do.

Utilizing the pushing force the robot exerted to block an imaginary blow, Xin kicked off the steel surface and rocketed towards the other robot, which was in a corner of the arena and aiming at Xin's mobile figure. Its processors (albeit slowed in order to accommodate training) could not react in time as the staff pierced its abdomen. Pulling his weapon out of the corpse rapidly, Xin threw it at the other bot, which blocked the projectile with its shield. With its vision obscured by the heavy kite shield, Xin jumped up and ran across the walls until he was behind the bot, the kicked the back of the head of his opponent, then grabbed onto its neck. While the robot reeled from the impact, Xin swung from the smooth metal pole to the front of the robot, retrieved his staff, and stabbed the robot again.

All of this took ten seconds.

These fights continued, first increasing to three level 1 training bots, then going to two level 2 bots. Xin became a whirlwind of action, incredibly mobile and versatile. He even picked up the fallen bot's rudimentary weapons and used them to deflect shots and strike when his staff was impaled into a faraway robot's gut.

Xin continued until the facility ran out of robots for him to destroy. He worked himself up to five level 6 robots before his aura finally shattered out of sheer exhaustion, and even then he still continued for two more waves until the chutes were empty.

He knelt on the ground, supporting himself with his staff, as demolished robot corpses twitched and sparked.

Of course he was accepted. As a discipline of his temple, he was given a pass on the written exams and given material to study, along with some lien to support his stay in Vale.

Xin was on his way to make stabbing things with the pointy end of his staff a career. And it was going to be a bright one.

Or so he thought.

….

….

The fight between Yun and the bandit leader lasted for hours.

From noon to sunset, the mysterious woman slashed and hacked with her katana, while Yun flopped around like a grounded fish, avoiding the deadly blade. His Chi was running on fumes, and his breath was erratic at best.

The woman also showed signs of tiring. The attacks were getting spaced out and sweat ran down her brow as her red eyes narrowed in frustration.

Yun had no idea how he was still alive. His muscles felt like jelly, but he pushed on, rolling on the grass and doing backflips, occasionally going in for a punch only for it to be forced away by a preemptive attack. The unconscious bandits had woken up, dazed and weakened, and proceeded to sit on the edge of the clearing where the two were fighting. The grass and flora in the clearing was trampled by footsteps and evasive rolls, while the trees were full of scratches for all of Yun's slings.

At last, during one failed backflip, Yun was captured again, with a katana pointed at his face.

"S.. surrender." The mysterious woman said.

"Wh-who e-even are you? Yun wheezed out, trying to catch his breath.

"Raven Branwen. Why am I even telling you my name?" Raven asked herself, shaking her head in fatigue and confusion.

In a last ditch effort to escape, Yun did something he never thought he would do.

Bite a katana.

Infusing his remaining Chi into his jaws, he bit down on the blade. It was currently a dull grey, and not infused with any weird elemental powers. In her moment of confusion over Yun asking her name and _biting a freaking weapon_ , She lost the katana.

Holding onto it and running for it, Yun infused aura into his legs as he sped away, katana in tow.

Raven sighed and collapsed.

The bandits helped her up, and she walked back to her tent, intent on getting some sleep. Her hand reflexively rested on her katana, but only met air because that _brat_ had stolen her katana.

"Should we pursue him? He shouldn't have gone far. The fight had exhausted him." A bandit asked.

"Don't. He's not worth the effort." Then, she glared at the crowd to see if any of them dared to go against her judgement.

Being in the mood she was, Raven was not likely to tolerate any dissenters. Her underlings wisely agreed.

…..

Yun had no idea where he was going. Running through the wilds, katana in hand.

His mind was running at a million miles a second. Who was this Raven Branwen? Was she just a bandit lord? How could she resist Chi attacks and turn into a goddamn bird? And what was this with the katana changing colors with elemental properties and all that?

Was it magic?

Or was it just freaky biological mutations like the American superhero movie trash his dormmates in college had been ranting about in a Hong Kong dialect?

But then again, there were people with magic _in_ those superhero movies.

Yun never understood the appeal of superheroes anyways. Paragons of justice with genetically granted powers?

No thanks. It didn't help that almost all of them were generic white people either. Not that he knew what the phrase even meant. Experiencing the color white was impossible in the first place.

Speaking of the color white….

Was it normal for wolves to have white masks and red eyes? Or was this crazy biology at work again? The empty look and mechanical movements of the creatures filled Yun with uncertainty. As if catching onto the feeling, one wolf freed itself of its melancholic traveling and began bounding towards Yun.

Great. Another fight. Just what he needed.

How was he going to kill a heavily armored wolf?

His Chi reserves were already low, and using it more would result in internal organ damage, rupturing the liver, spleen, kidneys, and possibly the brain. The diary made this very clear. What other tools did he have?

Oh wait. The katana. Yun looked at the grey blade in his hand, then tried to recall what Xin said about weapons.

Whether it was "Stick them with the pointy end." or "I forgot." was the question of the century.

Yun decided to go with the former. Copying Xin's stance, Yun held the blade behind him and a fist in front, channeling the tiniest bit of Chi through his front arm so as to be able to tank a blow.

He couldn't tank much anyways. His arm was already dotted with scratches, making it look like a red and white checkerboard. Blood tricked down from the wounds and dotted the grass, his bloodstream being exited by the Chi flowing through it.

Yun would either die of organ failure or bleeding out. It was only a matter of time.

Swinging his arm, he sent droplets of blood into the red eyes of the wolf pack. Mistaking it for a projectile, the wolves in front cowered and shrunk away. Meanwhile, the wolves behind him pounced, some jumping him and others running towards him, claws out and armor plates shining in a white sheen.

Swinging his blade behind him, Yun used the momentum to completely turn around and punch a wolf in the gut. Then, he took advantage of the dazed state of the creature and stuck the wolf with the pointy end of the katana.

It died. One down, about fifty more to go.

Sweating furiously, Yun shifted to the right to avoid a claw swipe and stabbed with the pointy end once more into a wolf's exposed flank.

Two down.

Another wolf jumped at him. Yun slid under the beast's unprotected stomach and stabbed it in passing. His blood formed a red trail to his motion. Coupled with the loss of hydration through sweating, Yun was already feeling faint. He ripped off his right sleeve and hastily wrapped the black cloth around his left arm. The fabric quickly became crimson but he could feel his Chi leaking at a slowed rate. Taking another deep breath, he stopped unconsciously dodging wolf attacks and grabbed a wolf's face, flipped himself over it to dodge two more pounces, and scored a deep blow in the wolf's flank. A familiar black gunk oozed out of the wound, and Yun realized that these creatures were the things Xin was running from while carrying him during Yun's first day on this world.

If Xin had to run from these creatures, he had to also.

Batting a wolf aside, Yun didn't pay attention to the snapped blade of his katana as he ran past the stunned wolf and made a run for it, pushing off a rock to jump onto a tree then leaping from branch to branch. The wolf pack followed, stopping occasionally to howl.

" _They're calling for more of these shadow creatures to come and kill me."_ Yun realized.

Yun had to escape. And fast.

Channeling his Chi once more, his abdomen constricted in pain. He was drawing in more energy from his Chi core than he actually had, and his organs were paying the price of upsetting his internal balance. Still, with this new energy, Yun doubled his pace. The wolves were left in the dust, the howling getting further and further as he propelled himself in this parkour course of fate.

Still, there was no running from the wolves. Humans were supposed to have higher stamina because they could sweat, and wolves had to pant to release excess body heat. These wolves didn't so much as breathe.

He was royally screwed.

The short burst of energy had run out.

For the second time in his existence, his senses faded into nothing as he fell from a high place.

….

Pyrrha was actually very exited about this camping trip. Her father, an accomplished hunter, finally persuaded her paranoid mother for her to go on a father-daughter bonding trip.

Now, walking in the backwoods of Mistral, Pyrrha hummed a little tune as the two ventured into the unknown.

She also bought her own weapon, because her mother had insisted. A red and gold training sword with a leather grip, Pyrrha had received it during her seventh birthday, and it was her pride and joy. She had recently taken up training with her father and found that she had an aptitude for the martial arts of sword fighting. Her father was static, but her mother was less than enthused when she voiced her dream of being a huntress. She had said it was too risky, and having one hunter in the family was enough.

Just then, a heavy thump bought her attention to the left. Tilting her head in curiosity, she pushed aside a low hanging branch to investigate.

She saw a white-haired boy collapsed on the ground, a trail of red behind him. A broken katana was tucked into the belt of his black robes.

"Dad!" She yelled, panicking.

"What is it, Pyrrha?"

"There's this boy that's not moving here!"

The sound of dropping equipment was heard, and her father ran to her position.

"Dust, what happened here?" her dad said, looking at the boy. As if on cue, a puddle of blood began to ooze out of the boy's left arm.

Pyrrha shrieked in terror, backing away from the body.

The boy was quickly gathered up in her father's arms, and they ran back to their campsite. Hiking sticks and packs lay forgotten in the grass as the three sprinted, one unconscious, one concerned, and one terrified.

…

Yun awoke inside a tent. His eyes snapped open and swiveled from side to side, scanning for threats.

Wait, tent?

Oh crap he was in the bandit camp again!

Making as little noise as possible, he sat up. The sleeping bag he was on rustled a bit. Channeling his Chi, his insides turned, reminding him that his Chi was probably working on healing all the wounds he sustained. Inspecting his bandaged left arm, he peeled off the cloth to see that the wounds were already growing itchy scabs. He left it alone and focused on meditating for a while, breathing evenly and generating slightly more Chi in case he was attacked again.

Once his internal pains ceased, he opened the tent flap and stepped outside.

It was approaching sunset, and he held out a hand to block out a sun that was staring him right in the face.

A young girl walked out of the woods and into the clearing that the campsite was in. Seeing him standing, she dropped the log she was carrying and ran back into the woods, returning with a grown man.

Yun stared at them long and hard, eyes glistening in the sunlight.

"You're not bandits, are you?" He asked.

"I don't think so, young man. Now, care to tell me why you were out in the woods with nothing but a broken katana?"

Yun sighed and massaged his temples with his hand. This oddly mature gesture made the man raise an eyebrow in confusion.

"It's a long story." Yun confessed, walking over to a pile of logs and sitting down, his torn robes flapping in a slight breeze.

It actually wasn't, but the exclamations in the middle of the tale certainly made it so.


	7. A1 C7 Uncovered

**AN**

**I have returned! And I come bearing gifts!**

**If it wasn't obvious already, I don't own RWBY. I'm just some random person pitching my two cents into the fandom.**

**Have fun reading!**

**(By the way, my goal is at least 3000 words every chapter, even if you probably didn't want to know that.)**

Excerpt 4: Old Memories: Running in the Dark

I remember the constant struggles of math. The questions were there, and the concepts were in my head, but I could not put two and two together.

Literally.

How was I supposed to do it without actually seeing the problem? And because there were sixty other students in the room, the teacher could not lend a hand. His hands were full, literally, with all the cheating devices that the students had tried to smuggle in and the other random chaos in the room.

In hindsight, it was very ironic that I got out of the town via a math competition.

This time to solve my many problems with being blind, I took the dramatic approach.

….

Stalking the depths of the ancient library, festered with evil spirits, the lone adventurer pushed open a door to access the ancient tomes written in an illegible language. Told to possess untold power, one could only channel its might through extensive meditation. The traveler had found an artefact, a small, golden amulet passed through the family to better focus his energy on his quest of learning.

Sneaking past the golem that guards the darkest secrets of the deities, the adventurer shifted from the shadows in the dim torchlight-

"Hey ZhiLing, what are you doing here? And why are you narrating to yourself in that weird voice? What's this about shifting through the shadows of an ancient library?" the storekeeper ZhangGui said.

"Oh, I just decided to tackle my problems with a little more flair and adventure, you know what I mean?"

"What is this flair you speak of?"

"Anyways, can I have a math book?"

"Sure. Don't see why you'll need it, anyways. That'll be five yuan a copy. I should have one that suits your grade level."

Hearing the sound of the manager rustling around and searching for the book, I took a second to admire the environment in the shop. The smell of old paper emanated throughout the air, giving it the appearance of the scene I was just visualizing. From what I sensed, this shop could very well come out of one of those adventure novels. The shopkeepers were gruff enough to substitute the dialogue of the hermit blacksmiths present in every single Chinese novel set in the dynasties ever.

A book flapped its pages in front of me, and I took it, then fumbled around for a ten RMB note. A good tip for fellow blind people were that RMB notes were actually different sizes. You just had to find the short edge and compare the length to your index finger. The fives, in this case, were the second smallest type of bill. In my pocket, they were the largest. Nobody in my village would walk around with a 10 RMB note in their pocket! That would be enough money to last them for two days!

Still, to aid myself pass math, giving away about two months worth of pocket money was worth it.

Getting the book and feeling its slightly plasticky cover, I went to a quiet place and began to trace the irregularities on the book slowly with my pinky, trying to get a sense of the printed numbers. I learned how to write Chinese characters like this by just dumping time in! I can read these passages if I try hard enough too!

…

_Five years later…_

Many children sat in a classroom. Pencils scrabbled furiously. The students struggled to wrap their minds around difficult problems and complex formulas.

Only one sat there, calmly thinking, seemingly wondering about the meaning of life or some other grand problem. Occasionally, he would scribble a word or two on the sheet, but most of the time he just stared out into space and tapped his pencil.

Twenty minutes later, a test was handed in by none other than that boy. Because the test still lasted for forty minutes, the graders decided to grade this one early and found out that the kid got a full score. What was weirder was that he did the whole thing in twenty minutes and there was no work on the page. It wasn't required, but the page was literally blank other than the answers and the questions.

After the exam, the boy was called over to explain.

"How did you do all this without putting down any work?"

"I just did it all in my head."

"You definently cheated. Where did you find the answers?"

"Sir, I literally can't cheat."

"Why is that? Don't give me some terrible excuse-"

"I'm blind, sir."

The man blinked.

"What?"

"Yeah, I'm blind, sir." The man looked at the child's unnaturally shining irises, the silver color of the eyes radiating light.

"That proves you cheated even more! You couldn't have read the questions, so you communicated over the internet to get some sort of answers-"

"With all due respect, sir, what's the internet?"

…..

Eventually, I managed to convince the scorer that I wasn't a cheater, or just pretending to be blind, or a psychic alien sent here by my people to take over the planet. (The last one may or not have happened.)

I received an invitation of sorts, reading over the text, I smiled. It was an invitation to a boarding high school, costs covered by a generous sponsor.

And four months later, sitting on a horse drawn cart, I headed for a bus stop. My bulky luggage lay behind me, most of it being covers, bags of local produce, and books that I gathered after I learned how to read via touch.

I was the first child of this generation to emerge from this town. And I was going to take the world by storm.

The future was bright.

Metaphorically, of course. It wasn't like I couldn't interpret the intensity of light.

….

….

"So what you're saying, is you're an orphan raised in the middle of nowhere by a martial arts master, who began to teach you to fight when you were five year old. You trained for four more years, until you were attacked by Raven Branwen, Bandit Queen of Mistral. You were knocked out, then dragged over to their camp, where you escaped but was dragged into combat once more. You then proceeded to fight with the bandit queen, which you did so for hours. You escaped again by biting the katana and slapping it out of her hands, then parkoured for two hours straight followed by a pack of beowolves, before collapsing." The man who rescued Yun commented

"Sounds about right. Not to mention the devil bird I beat in the face with a roof tile when I was four. Real bloody business, that. Almost wrecked the whole building, that damned avian creature." Yun responded, fidgeting with his bandages. Upon unraveling them, he found a network of scabs, courtesy of his increased healing.

"Well, thank you for your fire and your hospitality, but I must take my leave." Yun said eloquently, silver eyes twinkling in the moonlight. "It would not do to keep my master waiting, and the punishment for being astray for so long would be fatal. And now, I bid thee adeu."

Yun bowed, smoothly picked up his katana, crouched, and jumped into the trees. Balancing on a branch, he winked back to the two, eyes flashing mischievously, before vanishing into the night with a swish of his robes.

"…. What was his name again?" the girl asked.

"I don't think he told us, Pyrrha."

And from now on, Pyrrha Nikos had a new definition of weird. A white haired, reflective silver eyed, black robed, eloquent anonymous storyteller that was the boy that just left them.

…

Yun dashed away in the night, leaping in the treetops. He followed the trail of blood in the grass, glittering slightly in the moonlight. He knew he left the trail when he was parkouring.

He smiled to himself. Now that was the exit worthy of being in a novel! That was one of his childhood dreams accomplished. Nobody told him it would be so satisfying.

Then again, he didn't know anybody that could pull off what he did. Maybe except Xin.

That dude was so like one of those cliché mysterious mentor figures.

Stopping himself from geeking out about novels, Yun stopped his parkour and crouched down on the trees, observing the campsite before him. It was a miniature city in the night, with lamplight in every tent and a roaring campfire at the center. It would almost be pleasant if not for the host of bandits Yun knew lived there. The cages covered in animal skin also spoiled the image somewhat.

So now, for a very good question: Where in the world was the farm?

First, how did the bandits even find him? He was in a farm in the middle of nowhere. There was no smoke and it was dangerous out in the woods, according to Xin. Thus this encampment must be close enough to the farm for it to be found by the bandits.

Second, he must have left a trail going here. If there wasn't a trail, there should be relatively flat terrain to drag a body with. There were no accomplices at first for the woman, since she was put in some dire situations, and no backup ever appeared for her aid. That means he was carried back to the camp by his assailant.

" _There should be some heavy footsteps in the dirt or bruised grass somewhere…_ " Yun thought, crouching down low and creeping around the camp's walls, trying to find a trail that would lead him back to where he started in this hectic day.

Well, at least he got a broken katana out of the day. Its tip was still surprisingly sharp. If Yun took a whetstone to it, the blade could be repurposed to be a short sword.

At last, he found what seemed to be a trail of relatively clean path around the walls, most likely caused by his travels. Following the trail once more, through a shady forest and humid bamboo grove, he arrived at the farm. Xin, hearing the noise, stepped out of the generator room, saw his haggard state, and walked up to him.

Yun got a whack to the head. Rubbing the bruise, Yun meekly looked up at Xin.

"Where were you? You were not in the farm when I returned."

"About that…" Yun said, nervously shifting around, "I kinda got kidnapped by somebody called Raven Branwen. Apparently, she's the bandit queen of Mistral or something."

"You were kidnapped by a bandit leader …and escaped?" Xin said, slowly processing the facts.

"Yeah. And I stole her katana." Yun said proudly, showcasing the broken weapon.

"… Impressive. Raven Branwen is a strong huntress in her own right. You are now ready."

"For what?"

"Making your own weapon."

Yun fist pumped, sniffed the air, caught the smell of overcooked rice, and ran towards the generator room.

Xin followed, not understanding what was wrong. According to him, the rice wasn't ready yet. Was Yun really that hungry?

….

Making a weapon was difficult.

For a person with no formal instruction, thinking of a style was difficult. Sure, he had received unarmed martial arts tips, but he didn't know how to use a weapon.

Constructing it was relatively simple. He could simply melt down the katana, or he could repurpose bamboo.

Flipping through the journal, Yun found a note of a curious occurrence. A stalk of bamboo was burnt and came out as a tube harder than brick. Apparently, the previous owner had used the staff as a weapon and found it to be exceedingly effective and could hold its own against steel swords.

Now what was this material, Yun thought.

Yun was adept in crafting (his half-complete engineering degree in his previous life spoke volumes), but he was not particularly adequate at procuring material.

At least bamboo was aplenty here.

Walking outside, Yun took the broken katana (now with a fixed point) and slashed down several respectable stalks of bamboo, and began experimenting with fire.

He nearly burnt down half the bamboo forest before he got anywhere. The black material produced was either too brittle, shattering upon contact on beating rocks, or too malleable, breaking under its own weight. In frustration, he threw the remaining stalks of bamboo under the rest of the failed experiments and burnt them, and buried his face in bed.

The bedroom was now a combination of blueprints and hypothesis about materials. Among the repurposed sheets of paper, and diagrams scribbled on the walls, Yun spent the night. Xin didn't exactly care for aesthetic or organization, so the sorry state of the room was permitted to continue.

The next day, Yun shoved the burnt rice down his throat, consulted more hypothesis, and planned to continue his experimentation. He chopped down yet more of the foliage and returned to the burn site. Sighing deeply, he cleared out the pit that was filled with burnt bamboo and put the new one in, before consulting the list of instructions he made on the margins of the diary (he had ran out of usable paper), and pulled last night's product out of the earth. It was buried in a veritable mountain of ashes and earth.

He prepared to add the blackened product to the scrap pile when he realized that it was… surprisingly supple. Testing it, he channeled his Chi through the material, walked to the stone that was lugged to the edge of the clearing he was in to test the material, and struck the rock.

The stone shattered, and the material merely gained a small crack in the middle.

Was this… success?

Yun tasted something new in the air. It seemed… fresher. The sun was a little brighter. The remaining bamboo began swaying in the wind, and he sat down on the pile of failed experiments, looking at the clouds.

It was nice. Peaceful, even.

Like the feeling of learning how to read without seeing, or writing without vision.

And for the first time in years, Yun relaxed for a day.

He had dealt with getting into a new world, not died to anything, fulfilled a childhood dream of having a dramatic exit, learnt kung fu and Chi, and now had a surefire way of creating a weapon.

What could possibly go wrong now?

Not much.

And like a rubber band, Yun slumped into a loose coil as the tension was released.

He did still have to make his weapon…. but it could wait one more day.

The clouds were nice today.

….

Shaving strings off the material was a hassle.

Yun finally decided on the one object that he would create: A fan. It would be unassuming and could be carried everywhere, but the material should be stable enough to deflect bullets if it were in a fabric form.

This material was difficult to bend, but it would crack if it were hit with a hammer. So, shaving the material into string and weaving it into fabric would over come that issue, since the structural integrity of the fabric would distribute the shock among the many strings. The impact would be spread around the fan, finally stopping at the support stems of the fan, thin patches of carbon fiber. Yun made many of these and carried them around to have replacements. He had already created the supports, and now he was struggling to make the strings have a suitable form.

Coincidentally, this material was also known as carbon fiber.

Yun had wanted to knock himself out when he found out. He knew the carbon fiber production process and could have created a device to manufacture it. He didn't have to go through that soul crushing experimentation at all!

And how would this material fare against physical blows?

Chi reinforcement was the answer. Because the material was formerly organic, Chi flowed through it better than metals, giving the already hard material even more resistance to breaking.

Plus, the weapon was light, perfect for attacking pressure points, and was convenient. It got hot out in the wilds without Air Conditioning or electronic fans.

It did have a few tricks on its sleeve. Painstakingly, Yun had created two layers of the fabric and created compartments where small carbon fiber kunai knife replicas could be stored. Even if they weren't very sharp, with Chi, it would be a devastating projectile to be hit by. Yun had carved out so many of these and hid them in various robe compartments that the carving knife he had asked Xin to buy was already wearing out.

And there was the matter of robes. Yun had no armor, and he wanted to change that.

Leather was out of the question. Game was rare, and to find something with a durable hide, Yun needed to go all the way across the continent or something.

Yun decided to make more carbon fiber and sow it onto his robes. That way, he could have Chi enforced armor that can hopefully lessen the laceration wounds he suffered from when he decided to block attacks with his limbs. It was… a project that was in the works.

For now, he had to gather enough materials to make his weapon, damn it!

Xin just leaned against a tree, watching(?) the process. Yun had gotten used to his mentor and theoretical father figure wearing the blindfold all these years. The weird thing about that one slip of fabric was that it never degraded or faded throughout the years. Xin had never taken it off.

So how was he able to see?

Was his eyesight so good that he needed something to block out the excess of information? Were his eyes very light sensitive?

Yun was curious, but he may as well never get answers. Xin was always on his guard, and his attempts at sneaking into the generator room to analyses its mysteries were always stopped by Xin standing right at the doorway, his blindfolded eyes looking straight at him.

Concentrating on the task at hand, Yun created yet another long strand of carbon fiber, ran his finger along the material to test its uniformity, and added it to the growing coil of material. The string wasn't much in the grand scheme of creation, but it was something. Picking up the knife, Yun shaved off another thin section of the material and began the process again.

**AN:**

**And we are approaching the end of Act 1!**

**Just one more chapter to go!**

**It is indeed a bit late, but it wasn't long overdue.**

**We are also about to breach 20,000 words! Huzzah!**

**Please favorite, follow, and review! It provides more motivation for me to write and gets my creative gears turning more.**

**Also, how's the format of the story? One flashback followed by real progress in the book is what I'm going for, but I could do less flashbacks if you readers want.**

**What the masses demand, I shall provide. That is the business of being an entertainer.**


	8. A1 C8 Unleashed

**AN**

**Hello, my friends!**

**This week I have been thinking about this story's future. Nothing much actually, just outlining and planning on the perilous journey that would be traveling as a fifteen year old across a world that would be considered completely alien for a boy who lived more on Earth than on Remnant.**

**Sorry for the slightly late update.**

**Still, a tip for all you aspiring fanfiction authors out there: Always plan your work. One tiny mistake, and your whole plot will fall apart. Do plenty of research and spend time on a planning document to prevent this catastrophic collapse. This happened to my story on AO3, and I do not want a repeat.**

Excerpt #3: Xin's Memory Banks: Initiation

Beacon was… large.

Perhaps even larger than the mountain our monetary sat on. Seriously, the medieval castle thing was that large.

Walking on the paved marble after taking an airship (an equally novel experience, filled with plenty of uncertainty), I looked at the other accepted applicants with curiosity.

They were nothing like me. With flashy weapons like huge falchions, swords, spears, sai blades, grapping hooks, guns, or all the above combined, they wore specialized attire and armor. Their eyes bore a commanding gaze and their bodies bore the trace of training.

This was also the first time I was among so many people of the same age. It also happened to be the tenth anniversary of the academy, making the architecture even more colorful than usual, with bright banners flying from the buttresses, all with the golden number ten embroidered in the green flags. Red banners flew from the sides of the castle.

The compound looked majestic in the clear weather.

I followed the crowd, each little group chatting, doing whatever teenagers did, into an auditorium many times bigger than even the grandmaster's house back in the monastery, and that house took up basically a fifth of the mountaintop!

There, the headmaster gave a random speech that I didn't particularly care for. I had heard enough high and mighty speeches in my day, and guess where that put everybody?

Dead.

Well, except for me.

"I noticed that you don't quite care for these speeches." A voice said.

I turned, noticing the black-haired, brown eyed man wearing a black coat, green scarf, and an odd pair of spectacles.

"Empty words, filling us with the delusion of grandeur, keeping our souls white as snow while the world is tainted in blood."

"… Interesting outlook."

"You kinda change when you're the only survivor of an insurrection in your monastery of people bowing down to floating grimm orb things."

The white-haired teen's eyes widened imperceptibly, but Xin still caught onto it. You didn't spend your days with stone faced monks and instructors to not learn how to read them even if their expressions didn't change no matter what they were feeling.

"… What happened to your monastery?"

"They all died. I was the only survivor."

The black-haired teen wisely chose not to continue the topic.

"My name is Ozpin. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Xin. And same."

I extended my hand for a handshake, but not before slipping a certain device into his palm. Ozpin, oblivious of the sleight of hand, reached for it.

Bzzzzzzztt…..

Ozpin's hair suddenly stood on its ends. He unclasped his hands with mine and found a shock buzzer, then deadpanned at me. I simply chuckled and held up the hand, waved it in the air, and slipped the device off.

"So they taught you how to use shock buzzers in the monastery?"

"It's …. A recent hobby. Anyways, see you around." I said, winking and walking away.

….

Flying through the air, I regretted my decision to come to this school.

What kind of institution flung their initiates off a cliff?

How the hell was he going to live? Think! Falling, physics, air friction, restoring force-

Wait, restoring force?

I looked at the staff in my hands and thought. I would need to throw the staff at extreme velocities to make this landing work. Channeling the blue energy, I got back in the monastery during the battle, I concentrated on the movements of my arms and threw the staff into the ground just when I was approaching ground level. The restoring force of the throw provided me with upward momentum, drastically slowing my descent. My guts churned at the sudden change in velocity as I plummeted towards the earth, landing on my toes and bending my knees to reduce the relative velocity between me and the ground, softening the fall.

"Impressive landing." A voice behind me said.

I turned. It was Ozpin, the boy I had pranked.

"So, we're partners, huh?"

"I assume so."

The two walked in silence in what Ozpin said was north. I didn't dispute him, Ozpin's eyes giving a look of wisdom beyond his years. His weapon, a cane, was used as a mere hiking stick, but I could see the countless hours one had to put in to create such an intricate piece of art, with the medieval look, and the simple yet elegant mechashift gears.

Then, beowolves appeared. The creatures surrounded us, cutting off our escape. We were in the middle of a dense grove and we couldn't swing our weapons because of it. The trees would impede the movement greatly.

"Guess this is what we came for, huh?" I muttered, before jumping up and kicking off a tree, staff pointed straight at an eye of a beowolf. Ozpin merely raised an eyebrow and held his cane in a defensive stance. Most of his attack repertoire was based on swinging his weapon, and he was frankly ineffective in this environment.

After my staff reached its destination in the beowolf's head, I dodged a swipe of the claw before pulling my weapon out of the dissolving demon and fended the beast off with a series of kicks and stances taught to me in order to fight in close quarters. Eventually, the pack's population waned through a series of stabs, dodges, and complicated acrobatics.

Sweating slightly, the two walked out of the grove and into a clearing, where a temple where the relics that decided their teams lay.

"Shall we proceed?"

"Lead the way."

And a new legend was born. Ozpin, future beacon headmaster, mastermind of Remnant and leader of light in the secret war. Along with me, Xin Hui, the nameless operative, the shadow of the general.

…

…

Yun was not having a good time.

After two years, he had finally finished his modified robes and weapon, along with the several kunai blades hidden in the fan. His outfit, one of pure black, stood out against his bright eyes and white hair. Working carbon fiber was a pain but learning how to use his weapons was difficult too, with nothing but the diary and his experimentation to guide him. The margins of the diary were filled with notes detailing what to do and what not to do when using the fan as a weapon, along with the failure or success associated with each point. Between tending the farm and practicing additional skills like hunting, fishing, weaving, and foraging, the time flew by.

Yun still didn't figure out how to make a hood look stylish. His failed attempts were used to create more rice bags to store the crop.

Even with his new gear and plenty of practice with it, he was losing terribly.

Xin was simply ferocious. On top of using his staff, he used his legs and free arm to constantly attack Yun in a flurry of chaotic movements. In short, Xin was holding back before the real training began.

Rolling out of the way of a strike and twisting his body impossibly so that a kick didn't split his face in half, Yun twisted his body up like a snake and literally pounced away from the veritable storm of death, then turned himself around, aligned himself with one of Xin's vulnerable pressure points, and launched himself towards it, the tip of his fan overcharged with Chi in an attempt to score a crippling blow. It obviously didn't work, with his weapon being hit off course by the staff. He reinforced his cloak to cushion the blows that came from Xin's flurry of kicks while parrying more blows of the staff. His fan was holding up admirably, but Yun couldn't keep with his Chi expenditure. The energy flowed along his body through his veins, threatening to burst through the vessels and stain the robes red.

He had to expel the Chi he had gathered to defend while pushing Xin back. It was a risky method and left him vulnerable, but it wasn't like Xin would actually hurt him badly.

Yun took a deep breath and expelled his Chi through his skin. His robes billowed out as violent gusts circled around him. Utilizing his Chi to exert a certain degree of control over the air, he sent the winds he created at Xin, who crossed his arms over his face as the gusts pushed him back.

Yun stopped the expenditure. He had successfully forced back his foe and stopped Chi overpressure, but he was utterly drained. He knelt down, supporting himself by using his short fan as an ineffective cane.

Xin came in for the final blow, undeterred by the previous attack. Just as he swung his staff and prepared to deliver the customary blow to the back, Yun grinned, opened his fan, and launched the kunai hidden within.

For the first time in eight years, Xin was hit by an attack. The knives, though slightly Chi enforced, bounced off a blue barrier that appeared on Xin. He staggered back, torso still occasionally flaring blue (no doubt because of the withering effect of Chi on their opponent's blood vessels).

Yun's eyes were wide with shock. He didn't expect that to actually work. He didn't even expect Xin to take aftershock damage from Chi! Blood vessel degradation was only an ailment that was inflicted when an opponent with superior Chi landed a Chi-aided blow. The foreign energy would theoretically flow along the blood vessels of the victim, leaving damage wherever it goes. It was effective in culling individuals with weaker Chi, but for it to have an effect on Xin…

" _Does he not have Chi? How is he so strong then?"_ Yun thought.

Then he realized that he finally hit Xin.

"I… hit you?" Yun voiced in disbelief.

"Yes, you did. I have no more to teach you now. From now on, to improve, you must fight stronger people, people with different techniques. Only then will you gain the experience necessary. Fighting me is not going to grant you anything new in terms of ability or instinct."

Xin paused and took a deep breath, as if this was somewhat emotional.

"Though I must say, coming up with that feint was impressive." He said, smirking.

"B - but how?" Yun stuttered.

"You must have simply gotten used to fighting me." Xin reasoned, "Anyways, for the next step of your training, you must head over to a kingdom called Vale to find a man named Ozpin. Tell him Xin sent you, and show him the medallion."

"What medallion?"

"Oh. This one." Xin said, taking something out of his robe pocket and giving it to me. It was a silver disk, with a cherry blossom branch seared onto it, along with scratchings on it that vaguely resembled a temple.

"When do I leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"You can't be serious! I'm definitely not old enough! I'm like… uh … how old am I again?"

There were no calendars with which to record age, and Yun never paid attention to these things anyways. It was embarrassing to think about.

"You should be about fifteen or sixteen. You're certainly mature enough to be that age." Xin reasoned, brows wrinkling in confusion.

"I began training when I was five, and uh, fought the bandit lord at nine? Then I spent… two years making and training with my weapons? Did I spend three or four years at this stage of training?"

"So you're fifteen. That's old enough."

"Really?" Yun said skeptically.

"Indeed. When I was fifteen, I … actually forgot what I did. But I definitely did something important. You're leaving tomorrow."

"But-"

"No more arguments."

….

That night, lying among the various old blueprints of creating carbon fiber or actually making the weapon, Yun reminisced. He lounged on the worn pillows and mattress, a packed bag on the bedside. In it was a bag of rice, a compass, fire starters, a pot, the broken katana (with a crude bamboo sheathe), the diary, another set of robes that weren't reinforced, and some salt, along with a travel map of the world, Remnant. Turns out the broken katana broke because its longer form was actually an extension of the blade, making it more vulnerable to attacks not aimed at its blade. The remainder of the katana was actually quite sturdy. Who would even make their katana that long and have a blade that pops out! It's just screaming "flashy but useless" at their enemies.

Then again, bandits in novels were not known for their wit. Perhaps some truth existed in stories after all.

The shattered moon shone through the windows of the house, illuminating the room with pale light. For the first time, Yun took a moment to look at the environment he had slept fifteen years in. Before, his mind was always focused on progress, progress, and progress. Now, he realized he had been focusing on nothing but it.

The room was very bare. Xin and Yun had barely touched the walls when moving in, and it was just whitewashed wall. The corners that connected the vertical walls to the ceiling had a multitude of spiders living on it. There must be a couple generations worth of cobweb and insect corpses there. The books remained untouched after Yun had read all of them. These books consisted of the geographical, linguistic, and mathematical topics, giving Yun absolutely no new knowledge other than where the major cities were about this world.

The limited silverware was scratched up over years of use, the knifes getting dull and the spoons and forks becoming about three quarters of their original size. It was a good thing that Yun had Chi and Xin had the precision of a robot in everything except cooking. If it weren't for reinforcing the utensils and being careful, the tools would have broken long ago.

It didn't matter that much. Yun knew how to use chopsticks.

In another corner lay a homemade fishing rod. It was an amalgamation made by Xin that was bamboo with plant fiber rope and sharpened wire. It worked well enough, with almost enough Chi forced into the material to instantly kill the fish it came into contact with. Chi worked disturbingly well on animals, making their skin peel away on the point of contact. It was disturbing and Yun tried not to think of the time he had palm struck a rat. It had almost instantly bled out and made a mess on the floors, spilling weaselly black guts everywhere as the rat floundered about while dying at an alarming rate from what was supposed to be a blow to knock the rat out.

Yun shivered. His living conditions were garbage.

Oh well. At least he got in a lot of Chi practice.

The reinforced robe Yun had been working on lay in a heap on top of the dresser. Adding carbon fiber to a whole robe took way longer than expected. It was adjusted for a person that was about six inches taller than his current height (which barely surpassed five feet, Yun not exactly having a good diet). He had to temporarily pin some of the robe to keep the hems folded, which was slightly irritating, but it was worth not making another set.

Speaking of his appearance, his hair was a literal bird's nest. Looking at the object (for the first time in years) with abject abhorrence, Yun used his fingers to comb through the mess, giving his hair a more rugged definition instead of being the incarnation of chaos itself.

Looking in the window for a while, Yun finally deemed his appearance satisfactory and collapsed on the bed, mentally preparing for the day tomorrow.

" _Now, since Xin said Ozpin was to the west, I have to…"_

Yun spent the rest of the day planning out his trip and how he would get across an ocean without any money.

…..

The next morning, I ate my customary meal of badly cooked rice while Xin looked at me with a smile that could be interpreted as the "I'm going to miss you" kind of smile.

I never realized how old he was. Even if his physique still looked healthy, his hair had many white patches among grey ones that suggested his original hair color had been black.

It was spring, and the rice seeds had just sprouted in the fields. The seedlings seemed to wave at him in the wind. The day was a cloudy one, with clouds in the air just like his unintentional namesake, covering the landscape in fog. As Yun put down the bowl, shouldered his pack, and mock-saluted Xin, the man in question smiled again, something trailing down his cheek.

"To think that I was the one who raised such a fine child, I could barely believe it." Xin muttered once Yun crossed the grand clearing of tree stumps and entered the forest.

Then, a black blur retreated from the forest and wrapped its arms against Xin. Xin stepped back in shock, only to realize it was Yun hugging him.

"Thank you." Yun whispered, "You were like the father I never had."

Then, Yun left again, leaving some sort of sketch behind. Xin knew it was drawn last night (since he had heard the scratching of the pencil), but he didn't know what it depicted.

It was a mediocrely drawn scene of a man with a farmer's hat and black robes shouldering a basket. On it, the words "Thanks for these fifteen years" were written on it.

It was folded in half and tucked into the robes of the man. With a sigh, Xin returned to the generator room, got out a pair of work boots, and stepped into the fields, pulling out some rogue weeds.

It had been a long fifteen years. For Xin, this was the end of his journey. For Yun, merely the beginning.

Xin would try hard not to forget this moment, or any of the moments he shared with Yun.

He had lost so much already. His first family, his brotherhood, two of his teammates, half a leg, some of his brain, both his eyes, and almost all of the memories that came with the first three items.

He would try not to lose memories of a fourth.

…

A life in darkness,

Ended, then granted once more,

This time in the light.

Sharper were his eyes,

Still clouded was his vision.

Of a foreign world.

One life spent in strife,

One more spent for life itself,

Chasing light instead.

_Act 1: Fin._

**AN: We did it, boys!**

**After some garbage poetry and symbolism, along with an attempt at a touching ending, Yun now goes into the chaotic chessboard that is Remnant.**

**Well, not really. He has to get there first.**

**Also, how does team RNJR even walk to Mistral? According to the map, there is an ocean between Vale and Mistral, and Patch is on the border of Vale that is the farthest away from Mistral.**

**Just something to think about, my readers.**

**Please favorite, follow, and review my crappy poetry / haikus.**

**I hope it served as something to be laughed at.**


	9. A2 C1 A mapped Journey

**AN: Greetings, my friends!**

**I have returned from the wastelands of busywork and taxes and such. Now, I arrive bearing gifts!**

**Voila! Another 3k word chapter!**

**Have fun reading, and follow, favorite, and review!**

**Also, shutout to whoever wrote that third review. Really made my day there. I'm not one to use emoticons, but here you go. 3**

Excerpt 5: The Sounds of Hefei

The road to the cities were exceedingly bumpy and filled with trucks loaded with livestock. It wasn't exactly a road to glory, but it was my first time in a bus.

I was moving without knowing what was doing the moving for the first time in my life. Before, it had been horses and walking, along with tripping everywhere I went. Now, I was on a hunk of metal going forty kilometers an hour with other hunks of metal traveling at a similar speed.

Screaming internally, I focused on absolutely anything other than what was going on. Beside me, passengers napped (judging by the snores) or did something with keypads, the clicking sound slowly driving itself into my brain. The recruiter told me that there were some students and a chaperone on this bus to guide students from other provinces around the city, so

" _When would this torment end?"_ I thought as I slumped in my seat.

….

Remembering the peace of the ride to this city, I held my head in agony as I tried to walk in a straight line, surrounded by a gaggle of students. I barely had anything, just a little cash, my bedroll, a pillow, and some writing supplies and my audiobook player.

Sadly, the audiobook player was out of battery.

Why was I holding my head in agony and wincing?

The city was so loud. The ride was a slice of heaven compared to this.

Sounds from all sides resonated in my ears and overloaded me with sensory data. The crowds here sent vibrations through the floor tiles that completely messed with my perception of where everything was. Listening to the chatter that my fellow students were making, I followed them so as not to trip over anything or walk into streetlamps. Street food vendors shouted as random animals screeched from their cages, presumably bought there to be sold.

Abruptly, something went off behind me. Whirling around on instinct, I panicked because of the loud noise.

It was a car horn.

Another one sounded, and I turned around to face that one. Before I knew it, a cacophony of car horns sounded on what I assumed to be a crowded street.

"You ok?" Somebody asked.

"Yeah… Just not used to how loud everything is."

" _Welcome to Hefei…."_ I thought, as I gathered my belongings that I had dropped unconsciously with the help of another student. It was going to be a hell of a time.

….

….

"….Whoa…." Yun whispered, staring at the grand structure that was the wall of a town.

The fortifications of the place seemed grand, for a city out in the middle of nowhere. It was a mere day's walk from the farm, and it should be the city that Xin bought strange gems, energy sources, fabric and other things from.

It also had a distinctly Asian feel, with the smell of tea and noodles coming from inside the walls. Sounds of laughter and chatter echoed out from the town, and several columns of smoke lazily drifted into the sky. There were four gates on the walls, and people carted wagons and crates in and out of it.

Clearly a thriving civilization. To think that humanity could progress so far with deadly creatures like the demons he had several near death encounters with, it was honestly impressive.

Still, the thought of this not being earth saddened him. He would never be called ZhiLing again, as he was in his old life, or have a family or parents. Xin was close to being a parent, but the old man with emotional sensing capabilities of a sentient rock didn't exactly fit the mark. He was more like a guardian, somebody who watched over you from behind a mask or a suit of armor, like it was his job or something.

To think of it, it probably was. Why else would Xin pick him up and raise him for fifteen painful years? According to adults back in his world, children were trouble, mischief, and idiots mixed all in one.

Approaching the city gates, Yun had a whole new perspective of cities. Gone was the impression of chaos and noise from all sides. What replaced it was something that was uniquely… human.

It was just.. wow. So many people were going on their lives. After fifteen years, Yun finally came into contact with local civilization. Well, civilization that wasn't a bandit tribe trying to kill him.

This was probably what his life would have looked like if he could see.

Still, he probably couldn't even enter the city limits. If what the geography books said was true, every city that had defensive structures up required some sort of identification saying that you weren't a felon or other sorts of criminals. Identification that Yun, somebody raised off the grid, did not possess.

That was one thing off the sightseeing bucket list.

Yes. Yun did have a bucket list for his new life. Most of which included sightseeing, living in a city without having ruptured eardrums (which probably happened), make a dramatic exit (that one actually was fulfilled), write a book series about the tragedy of his old life, and finish his engineering degree. The latter was unlikely because who knows what technology this world has? Generators don't even work in the same way!

Maybe the chemical composition of this world is completely different, and he wouldn't even know because of lack of information.

Pushing the troubling thoughts about his bucket list into the back of his mind, he located east via the sun and continued on the journey. After a day of walking, traveling through a supposedly dangerous world was actually pretty bland. No demons showed up and having correctly cooked rice as dinner was amazing, but other than that, it was just nature and nature for miles and miles. The same thing he stared at every day back at the farm.

Where were the mountain ranges and seas? Probably still very far away.

But for now, he had to find another stream. It wasn't hard, per say, but it certainly was a restraining factor on how far he could go each day. Theoretically, if he kept on running, he could go thrice the distance he was traveling per day, but he had to take care of food, thirst, and sleep. The two former requirements required water, and the major rivers were all saturated with various species of water demons according to the geography textbook.

Well, to be fair, the book just said that "great dangers lurked in the waters of grand rivers", but they were probably talking about the demons.

Speaking of streams, there was one right in front of him. Yun set his pack down on a nearby tree and took off his shoes. After being stuffed in leather boots for the whole day, his feet were in agony. At least the soles of the shoes protected him from the uneven territory he was walking on.

Getting out a tent made of white oilcloth, he set it up against another tree, then got out the pot and walked over to the stream to gather water, dipping his feet into the crystal-clear running water. Yun sighed at the pleasant cold that he felt and put on a pair of bamboo sandals he made himself when he was thirteen. Even if the bamboo was now a sickly yellow color and the rope tying the parts together were nothing more than dried twig, it still did its job.

Placing the pot down, Yun walked into the forest to gather tinder and small logs to boil the water.

Just as he poured the rice into the pot and prepared to wash the rice, something just had to go wrong.

Those pesky birds….

…

…

Running through the wilds at full speed, Yun barely had time to change to his boots, grab his weapons, and pocketing his armored cloak before that woman attacked again.

Yep. The bandit queen that he fought when he was nine? She was back. And judging by the ominous red glint behind her bone mask, she was definingly angry.

The worst part was that Yun had to ditch his supplies.

Great. Time to eat grass roots and tree bark like the communists did during the long march. Maybe he could eat his boots too… it would taste better than Xin's cooking.

" _No! Bad Yun! Stop thinking about food! Think about escape!"_ Yun thought, going over his options.

" _But food…"_ his subconscious argued.

Yun rolled out of the way of a katana strike, jumped over a low sweep, parried a blow with his Chi reinforced fan weapon, before using the momentum of the strike to catapult himself forward. He held his arms out and his robes billowed out with extensive Chi usage, making him a very basic paraglider.

Unluckily for him, he had failed to account for the shapeshifting powers of the woman. Said attacker fell from the sky like a crimson meteorite, her form accelerated with the momentum of her dive from her avian form.

Yun had to overload his Chi and push the woman back temporarily. Sadly, his Chi reserves plummeted and he fell towards the ground with absolutely no method of protection.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Yun screamed as he spiraled towards the ground, trying to manipulating his robes into catching the wind in a desperate effort to slow his fall.

It didn't work. Yun had to revert to other strategies, namely holding onto a rather smooth branch and launching himself into the air again, albeit not as high as before. He landed in the tree branches and took a couple of deep breaths to get his Chi to circulate once more.

At least he was still alive. Still the crazy woman knew all his tricks (including his explosive expulsion of chi, now that he had used it). Actually, maybe not all of them.

He did still have his weapons. A fan wasn't exactly a weapon you could predict.

The woman landed, holding out her katana and looking around the underbrush.

"Come out now, child! You may have escaped me years ago, but that was because I underestimated you. This time, I will prove my superiority by beating you into the dirt!"

Yun shivered in the treetops, wary of the woman's threat.

"I know you're still here, you insolent child. Do not test my patience."

" _Bloody hell, what do I do now? How did I even escape last time?"_ Yun asked himself.

The memories of biting a katana came into Yun's mind. He cleared his head of the image and sighed. He was not pulling that risky move again. Still, last time he escaped he did do so by catching the bandit queen off guard, so maybe he could do it again?

Then, an idea came to mind. The solution to this issue was Chi (Actually, Chi was Yun's solution to basically everything fighting related).

This time, Chi's application would not be in combat, but in distraction. Chi could be infused into an object to change its trajectory once the projectile was thrown. It only works on living or previously living objects, and the basics of it were to manipulate the very limited life energy in the object to slosh around in said object. It wouldn't do much other than expel the energy and create gusts of wind that would spin the object around, so it was useless for throwing heavier objects.

Yun's weapon, however, was a fan. A device built to channel the wind. This would allow him to use his fan as a boomerang, and thus as a distraction.

"You fool, get down here now or I'll slit your throat instead of just beating-"

Yun took this opportunity to strike. He opened his fan, the noise causing the woman to snap her vision towards him. Then, he threw it straight at her face. The woman used her katana to try and hit the weapon out of the air, only for the fan to curve back and go back into Yun's hands.

The bandit queen's attack carried her momentum forward, and without the resistance it would meet if it had struck the projectile, the force carried her forward, causing her to lose her balance.

Yun smirked, and quickly pushed off the tree to get behind the stumbling and kicked her in the back of the knee, then sent out the carbon fiber kunai knives to hit her back.

The woman stumbled, and the weapons caused a red light to ripple across her back. Yun spin-kicked her in the back again before swooping down to collect his kunai knives and running away, leaping once again into the branches of the tree and parkouring away.

When the woman had recovered, Yun was nowhere to be seen.

"Dust damn it." The woman cursed, aggressively sheathing her katana and changing into a raven. The bird flapped away, squawking angrily.

…..

Yun sat down at the base of a random tree, meditating and running his Chi through his body. The Chi blast followed by the flurry of offensive moves had damaged his blood vessels once more, making him leak Chi and suffer from minor internal bleeding.

"It could be worse." Yun muttered. "I could be dead."

Still, he was pretty close to being dead. Without food, water, or his tent, he would have to get to civilization as fast as possible. He had also lost his bearings as to his relative position to the previous village. And he was injured, and he couldn't use Chi for at least two days without suffering the consequences.

One of the things the old diary warned Yun of when practicing Chi was to never reinforce yourself with Chi when injured, for it would cause the injuries to worsen.

Speaking of important objects, Yun still had the medallion safely tucked into his robes, along with a fire starting kit. Standing up, Yun continued to walk east.

There should be some city to the east. According to the map, Mistral was somewhere around the last village he was at. He could probably visit it, and maybe get some food and find some sort of transportation. Maybe he could ride the type of airship he saw during the first day on this world. He didn't remember a lot from his first day, but he did remember being jealous about the modes of transportation.

Still, appearing next to each other on a map still meant they were very far away on foot.

Back to walking it was. Drawing his backup katana(a weapon that didn't need Chi to be able to actually hurt someone or something), he continued on his trek.

"Now all he had to do was walk across a continent… and cross an ocean… and find somebody that Xin had probably last saw fifteen years ago. All without money, food, supplies, or basic understanding of the local culture. Maybe I'll have to sneak onto a ship or something…"

….

Two days later, a very disgruntled Yun arrived at the gates of a city.

His robes were stained with mud. Dried grass and leaves were spread out in his appearance. Some got in his hair and others clung to his robes. Yun found out that when you dusted one of the leaves off, two would take its place. It wasn't worth the effort.

This city was even grander than the last. Instead of the dirt road leading up to the gate, this city had a marble one. It was of mountainous terrain and Yun could see the terrace farms trail down the mountains. A very visible mansion-like structure sat on top of a mountain, with a blue banner embroidered with a strange symbol on it.

While Yun was admiring the scenery, the citizens gave Yun's choice of attire some strange looks. Mistral was home to some unsavory characters, but no self-respecting person would walk around with such haggard clothing.

Finally noticing the weird looks, Yun walked into the trees, made sure nobody was looking, and changed into the set of armored robes. Attempting to clean his hair, Yun groomed it of the various bits of leaves until only a few twigs remained, and rejoined the crowd entering the city.

This time, nobody noticed Yun as he approached the gate. Guards were stopping people left and right, checking their identification before letting them in the walls. Yun, spotting another group of people wearing robes, stealthily trailed towards them and stayed in the vicinity of the group.

"Identification." A guard said to the group. One of them gave a card to the guard, and gestured to the group of people traveling with him. Yun stood a little off the side to the person that was in the back of the group. The guard nodded and let the group in, Yun trailing behind them, staying just far away enough so as to avoid notice of the robed group but not far away enough as to make the guards notice that they were not, in fact, traveling together.

After that little scene, Yun stepped inside the city, smiled, and continued to walk aimlessly in the streets.

" _Another thing off the bucket list."_

Stepping on a flyer, Yun picked it up and perused its contents.

"Mistral Regional Tournament Black horse combatant entry tryouts? 50,000 lien prize money for winning the tournament?"

Yun smirked. It was time to get his supplies back.

**AN: And there we go! Another chapter done. Time till canon begins: One year.**

**It was really late and all, but it's here!**

**Yun's entering the mistral regional tournament now! The funny thing abut Yun's gear is that it won't be affected by a certain someone's semblance.**

**And for all you Yankees out there, Happy Fourth of July!**


	10. A2 C2 Compass Rose

**Hey guys! I'm back! And I return with a chapter, found from the deepest depths of my subconscious!**

**Have fun reading!**

**Also, should I describe Yun's tournament journey in detail, or just leave it open to interpretation until the exiting parts? Throw me a bone here, pal. I'm a bit tired of writing combat scenes, but they're still fun.**

**I just want to say I appreciate you all so much for taking the time to read this. This is my first fanfiction and I'm amazed that I got this far. I've gotten 60 follows! 60 more follows than my last nonexistent post on this website.**

Excerpt 4: Xin's Memory Banks: Blindfolded

(Actually from Xin's first person POV)

Ever heard the phrase: "I could do this blindfolded"?

I was a snarky little brat. I took that phrase literally.

"And for the next match, Mr. Hui versus Mr. Alani."

Alati Alani. The man with terrible fashion sense and an equally terrible name.

The student was not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, so to speak. I mean, wore bright orange on a battle field? Somebody with absolutely no combat experience, that's what.

Of course, I didn't actually see any of this. I walked on the stage, staff used as a walking stick to guide myself as a black blindfold covered my vision.

The class laughed.

"Mr. Hui, I apologize for being this crass.. but" The teacher took a deep breath. " _What, Are you doing."_

"Mr. Alani said he could beat me blindfolded, so I decided to repay the favor." I said, sending a smirk in the general direction of the teacher. I was ninety degrees off and ended up leering at a window (As Ozpin later told me).

The class laughed again. Somebody pulled out a drum set and gave me a rim shot. I winked, before remembering I was blindfolded.

"You think you're so good, you monk? What are you going to do? Religion me to death?" Alati said.

"Trying to memorize the first line of a prayer would make your brain explode, so I do think it would work." I replied.

"Aaargh! Let's just begin!"

I just smiled, and allowed myself to be taken back to the temple.

…..

_Thwack!_

I was hit again. I stumbled and swiped my staff in that direction but was caught off guard with a blow to the back.

I hit the ground, surrendered, and took off the blindfold. My master stood before me, smiling, his goatee flowing in the wind. A flurry of cherry blossom petals dotted the background of snowy mountains.

Frankly, it was majestic.

"How do you even do this?" I asked from my comfortable spot on the ground. The cold marble beckoned to me in the wake of my defeat, urging me to put my face on it.

"Practice. Lots and lots of practice. Give me the blindfold."

I complied and threw the piece of cloth into the wind. My master snagged it with his staff and put it on, then got in a ready stance and faced the trees.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

His actions answered my questions. Like a hawk swooping down at prey, my teacher jabbed the staff at the petals, impaling them and creating a small chain of them on his staff. After a solid minute, he took off the blindfold and showed me the staff.

A chain of thirty petals, all impaled through the middle, were strung neatly through the finger thin practice staff.

"… Wow." I said.

"Once you can do this, you don't need eyes anymore." He said, dragged me up, and handed me the blindfold.

"Again."

I was beaten onto the cold floor again, but I got up afterwards and tried again. And again. And again. Until the bell for the evening meal rang.

….

Alati was creamed.

Him and his net-spear combination didn't stand a chance against the sheer ferocity and accuracy of my attacks. All done while wearing a blindfold.

Later, my blindfold was inspected by his classmates, only to find that it was probably the thickest piece of fabric this side of remnant. The inside of the headgear was even fur lined.

And yet I still was able to pinpoint where Alati's strikes were coming from, and his body's weak point's positions relative to my weapon.

Only Ozpin, the man's partner, remained unimpressed.

_In a past life, he had done the same too._

….

…..

Walking into the tryouts room, there were many other low lives there, aiming for a chance at the prize money. These folks, though attempting to go for a better life, silently despaired at their chances. Apparently a new victor had risen and was said to be invincible, never even getting hit by any opponents.

Of course, Yun was oblivious to this. He was also despairing, but not because of his chances of winning.

He was despairing because of his hunger.

He literally had no supplies, he couldn't go out of the city to forage, because he would have to come back in and frankly he didn't want to risk getting caught.

Stomach grumbles suppressed by an ironclad Chi control, Yun meditated as he kept a critical eye on the others and a firm hand on his number for the tryouts.

Ironically, it was forty-two. Thanks universe. (Yes, Yun had listened to a Chinese version of A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in his previous life. It was a classic, after all.).

"Number forty-two and forty-three, come in for examination."

Yun adjusted the hidden kunai in his fan, ruffled his robes so they wouldn't hinder his movement, stretched his arms, and ran Chi through his body.

He was as ready as ever.

" _This seems disturbingly like my math competitions back in my old life"_ Yun thought, fanning himself casually."

"Names." The judge said.

"Yu Wu."

"Crimson Kirmizi."

"Aura monitor on. You many now begin."

" _Aura?"_ Yun thought. _"What's that?"_

Well, if he was getting in the tournament from a selection of one hundred twenty eight candidates, he had to impress the judge.

Yun stood still and did nothing as Crimson charged, Spear in hand. A faded red ribbon was tied behind the spearhead, which flapped in the air because of the high speed Crimson was traveling at.

The strike came.

Yun reinforced his hand and pinched the blade, sending a wave of Chi down the shaft of the spear. The ribbon flapped wildly with the introduction of the new life energy and Crimson's hands flared red.

" _Why does everybody have a personal force field? This is unfair!"_ Yun thought as he overloaded his finger with Chi, formed a specific hand sign to channel the Chi to another human body, and placed his finger firmly on a pressure point, the energy going in and temporarily slowing the blood flow to his right side.. Crimson's arm would be weakened considerably.

Crimson's eyes widened as he tried to take back his spear, but found his side not responding to his commands.

Yun took this opportunity to wrench his spear from his fingers, and using the momentum, went along for a complimentary spin kick.

It was over. In about five seconds.

The judge looked stunned. It was the first time an actually skilled candidate approached the tryouts. Normally, people with this level of skill would enter the competition through more legitimate and sure channels.

"Yun Wu is the winner!"

After a dizzy Crimson staggered off the stage, using his spear as a walking stick, the judge asked another question.

"Can you still fight?"

Yun smirked.

"That was just a warmup."

"I like your attitude, kid. Call in number forty-four!"

…

" _What the hell is this kid?"_ The judge thought.

Already, fifty fights were over in half an hour. The kid took ten seconds max to overpower them using his overwhelming strength to immobilize their weapons, slow them down with a blow, and finally knock them out either with a spin kick or a well-placed punch to the gut. All without getting hit.

It was like the kid was a production line for defeats.

Still, it wouldn't matter in the next fight.

Number ninety-two. An absolute beast of a faunus (pun not intended, mind you), he was the previous black horse candidate to enter last year's tournament, only to be defeated by the champion first round through an incredible application of agility and somehow parrying the massive metal heap the man called an axe. Despite being at least half a ton, the weapon was still easily handled by the contestant in question.

The kid, though talented, would be screwed. He had fought already for a lot of matches, and his stamina was bound to go down.

"Names?"

"Ocel Seda."

"Yun Wu."

"Match… start."

…..

Yun knew there would be a tough cookie somewhere in the tryouts. There were one hundred and twenty eight people here after all.

Still, he didn't expect to be fighting the incarnation of tough.

With full body metal armor and an war axe with an axe head bigger than Yun's torso, Ocel stood at an astounding two hundred and fifty centimeters (approximately), and could probably touch the four-meter ceiling if he really tried.

Oh, boy.

Yun was in for a hell of a time.

"Match… begin. "

The teenager- no, man- roared under his helmet and charged, axe being swung in a circle rapidly.

It was like being sent to a meatgrinder.

Still, Yun had to push on.

Yun dashed forward with a burst of Chi and channeled the energy to his eyes. The world seemed to slow a bit as he increased is reaction speed artificially (just by a little) and grabbed the shaft of the axe. The force of the swings behind Ocel's spinning axe bought Yun to the ceiling. Yun anticipated this and braced for impact by bending his arms.

_Crash!_

Yun hit the ceiling, and the foundations of the place rumbled. People outside murmured and wondered what was happening.

Still, Yun was able to push off the ceiling and get onto the man's shoulders.

Helmets did limit peripheral vision after all.

Ocel grunted in confusion, seeing his quarry escape so suddenly.

Xin took the opportunity to jump down and punch the back of the man's knees. It was coincidentally unarmored, since if there was armor there, the mobility of the wearer would be compromised.

Ocel stumbled, and Yun followed up with a jump-aided punch to the back of the neck, but had to dodge an axe blow. The metal hunk embedded itself into the concrete floor, adding to the uneven surface's collage of marks. Yun jumped on the axe and kicked the handle. The attack was blocked by the extension of the man's bracer, a metal slab that covered the back of his hand. It did make Ocel falter a little, Giving Yun a little more breathing room.

" _How am I going to beat this guy?"_ Yun screamed internally, though his visage was the epitome of calm.

Wait. There was that ring out rule, wasn't there? If one exited the premises of the arena, they would be out of the competition.

There was one technique that could achieve such a thing. The only question would be: would it be enough? Ocel was wearing full iron armor, completed with pauldrons, shin guards, and all that. Not to mention the axe. He could just anchor himself in during the blast or just hold onto his axe.

Great. Time to disarm the giant.

Yun dashed to Ocel's weapon and held it down as he assumed a steady stance and channeled wave after wave of Chi energy stored over ten years at the enemy. His opponent roared, his hands bleeding from the rupturing blood vessels, but he still held onto his axe, a grey light shimmering over his hands.

This continued for some time, buy Yun suddenly stopped, jumped on the axe handle, and punched it.

The metal shaft snapped, with the application of Yun's punch combined with the Ocel's remarkable strength trying to keep the axe where it was.

Yun then called upon all the Chi he had in reserve and yelled, sending the gust out. The man crossed his arms in front of his helmet to shield his eyes from the gusts, and was pushed out of the arena. When Ocel came to a stop, he looked down to see that he was, indeed, pushed out of the boundary.

"… Winner, Yun Wu!"

Yun breathed in, circled his Chi, and sighed.

It was over.

Ocel grabbed both ends of his axe, nodded at Yun, and walked out of the room. Yun mock-saluted back, eyelids dropping with exhaustion, with one hand clutching his chest in pain.

"Kid, you want a break?"

"That would be much appreciated."

"Well then, head out of the room and sit for a while."

"Send in ninety-two and ninety-three!"

…..

The rest of the competition went without a hitch. Nobody was as strong as Ocel, but with his recently acquired injuries, he was slowed down, relying mostly on physical strength and Chi channeled into his weapons and armor only. Still, due to the various beatdowns he had received from Xin, he was still flexible and strong enough to flounder his way through the remaining matches.

And every single one of them had the strange force field thing that the judge called Aura. And they had weird superpowers.

Still, after seeing Raven turn into a raven (the bird kind, not just become more edgy and give off a vibe of stereotypical evil villain even more than she already did), Yun was prepared to see everything.

Still, he didn't expect somebody's semblance to be spontaneously producing sunflower seeds and sending them all over the arena, The clean up staff had a field day with that one, sweeping it into a sack and muttering about increased revenue. Yun did manage to snag two handfuls and eat the seeds raw.

It was utterly disgusting. Not because of the fact that it was spontaneously produced by a human(Seriously, how did it even make sense? Were the laws of Conservation of Mass just broken in this world?), but just because the seeds were better roasted.

His stomach wasn't complaining, though.

"Kid, I don't know how you did it, but you beat over half of these participants. You're in the tournament." The judge said, handing me some sort of certificate. I tucked it into my robes and shook his offered hand.

"Thank you for the opportunity."

….

_**AN: Rare first person scene!** _

Oh crap.

I was not ready for this.

There were so. Many. People. Watching.

I haven't even seen this many people in my whole life!

It was a stadium filled with people waving posters of a red-headed girl. Was this a fan-club or something?

Was I in the wrong place?

I walked back outside the stadium and checked the address.

Yup. It was the correct address.

I left the katana in the storage area they provided us. I just didn't know how to use the thing. I also got a new mask(A white one that I had decorated with doodles of a five petal Sakura flower) and a black hood because I was too nervous to show my real face. Luckily, nobody cared because they didn't mind the black horse candidate.

Everybody was rooting for this Pyrrha Nikos girl. Even some of the contestants were.

It was like a contest for second place.

" _But second place doesn't get the prize money!"_ I thought.

Thinking back about the food in my old life, I began drooling as a glazed look crossed my eyes. Fried tofu, cooked meals made with fresh ingredients, noodles, ramen, oh! The combinations were endless!"

I almost didn't hear my own name being called.

"….. And for the next match, Yun Wu, our black horse candidate, versus…."

Across me some rich kid with a golden saber, arrogant look, bad attitude, and completely obsolete armor stood in an unstable stance(I could tell as much, given that the diary had given me so many tips on footwork that I barely used) and leered at me.

I scoffed. Barely a challenge.

The announcer boomed out the various titles and social standings of my opponent as I identified weak spots and hypothesized a method to beat this kid and move on.

"… 3 , 2, 1, begin!"

The kid charged at me. A gold color flared on his legs as he shot towards me, Saber pointed straight at my throat.

Not actually a bad attempt, but Xin did stuff like this plenty of times.

I ducked under the blow, grabbed his arm, twisted it at an awkward angle, grabbed his sword once his grip loosened, and slapped him across the face with the flat of his own blade with Chi-empowered strength.

He fell away and groaned, a buzzer announcing that his health bar had gone into the red. For good measure, I threw the sword like a javelin so that it landed tip first into the concrete, two inches beside his right hand. His expression made it look like he was almost screaming out in fear.

What was with the health bar? Was it just some sort of addition to keep the fans entertained?

I shrugged and walked off the stage, unaware what kind of commotion I had caused.

Later, I would find out that no black horse candidate had ever made it past the first round.

…

Across a continent, a certain white-haired man with brown eyes and an antique cane looked at the screen of his scroll and sighed.

"What was Xin getting up to now?" Ozpin thought.

Why was his student in the Mistral Regional Tournament?

Well, any student of Xin ought to know his salt.

"This tournament is going to be very interesting indeed." He murmured.

…

In the locker rooms, a certain Invincible girl, aged fifteen, sat in her own private room, listening to her manager rant on about something. It was something like "keeping up appearances and winning against somebody faster than the black horse candidate did."

It was in moments like these, when she needed to keep being interesting to the public, that Pyrrha thought, what would that weird boy from six years ago do?

Pyrrha didn't remember much but a weird attitude for dramatics, flair, and being utterly crazy.

In her career, she adopted two of the three, ending her fights with a signature move and incorporating more than enough acrobatics into her own fighting.

For the third item, Pyrrha wasn't sure her sanity would hold.

She plastered her poster smile on again, shut off her scroll, and went outside to face the cameras.

With her semblance, publicity was more of a weapon than her opponent's weapons.

It made every single fight so boring. She could literally control what her component did with their weapon since literally everything nowadays was made out of metal.

" _To the beginning of an utterly boring Mistral Regional Tournament."_ She thought as she nodded at reporters and walked up the stairs to her match, almost bumping into another contestant dressed in strange black robes.

The crowd roared, and the speakers boomed again.

…...

…

**Omake: Ozpin makes an unintentional pun.**

"I have failed you, Yun." Ozpin said, holding his cane in an offensive stance. "I have failed you."

"I should have known you were in league with him, professor." Yun said, brandishing a blood red katana and holding his fan in a grip meant for a sword.

"Yun, Xin and I did not coordinate at all! He is completely at fault for this!" Ozpin shouted desperately as Beacon crumbled around them. Yun's negativity had bought the demons upon them, and now they were standing on two bullheads, floating above the crowd of certain death.

"From my point of view, you two conspired to make my life hell!"

"Well, then you are delusional!"

The bullheads burst into motion and the two combatants took a moment to steady themselves.

"This is the end for you, my headmaster."

Yun somersaulted and landed on Ozpin's bullhead, the two fighting, cane against fan and katana. Their clashes were so forceful that the bullhead buckled under the sudden changes in momentum.

Seizing an opportunity, Ozpin broke the bullhead they were on with one well-placed strike to the thrusters and jumped onto the top of Beacon tower. The bullhead slowly decreased in altitude, bringing Yun down with them.

"It's over, Yun. I have the high ground."

"You underestimate my power!" Yun shouted.

"Don't try it." Ozpin begged. "We didn't mean to name you Yun. I still don't have the foggiest idea why. I just thought the phrase was linked to clouds in ancient Mistrali!"

With a burst of Chi, Yun launched himself at Ozpin.

"Cease with the puns, you scum!" He screamed, trying to bring his katana down on Ozpin's face.

Ozpin sighed, and with a swipe of his cane, broke Yun's legs as he soared over him, courtesy of an overpowered jump. Yun's momentum was halted and he landed on the smooth glass, hands desperately scrabbling to find a handhold.

"You were the chosen one!" Ozpin shouted, tears streaking down his eyes. "It was said you would restore order to this world, not leave it in darkness."

An emotional violin piece played in the background, somehow.

"Bring balance to the world, not leave it in darkness!"

"I hate you! Why did you betray me like this! Why did you name me, just to make a pun out of my name!" Yun shouted, almost sliding to the edge of the tower.

"You were like a son to me, Yun!" Ozpin said dramatically, extending a hand towards Yun, a hand Yun could not reach for.

Yun screamed in terror as he dropped from the tower, falling to a fate that he could never escape: Death.

Ozpin sighed and sat at the top of the tower, waiting for a transport to come along.

All this, just because Ozpin apparently made a pun out of his name.

The shattered moon shined behind the clouds as it began to rain…

**AN: That was the most beautiful omake I've ever written.**

**Kudos to Star Wars with providing such intentionally vague dialogue. I just had to tweak a bit for the two to fall into their roles.**

**And that's another chapter, folks! Don't forget to favorite, follow, and review!**

**(Wow, I really am sounding more like a youtuber by the minute!)**

**Just to clarify, Being a "Black Horse" in tournaments just means being an unexpected contender.**


	11. A2 C3 Hiking Upwards

**AN: I have returned, and with a new chapter in tow.**

Enjoy!

Also, feel free to check out the other fic I have on my profile. It's not bad in my opinion and only has one chapter as of now. It's also about somebody getting trolled by the time and space gods of Pokemon. Should be funny enough, and it would also have the same "I'm so clueless about being in an alternate universe" vibe going on.

Excerpt 6: Old Memories: Humans are Idiotic Animals by Nature

It seemed like I could never escape them.

Idiots. They were everywhere. In the corner of the classroom, in his very dorm, and even when he left the school, the idiocy just got worse.

At first, it was the questions about being blind that got onto my nerves.

"How did you take the entrance exam?" I didn't.

"How do you read?" I don't. Not in the conventional sense, at least.

"How do you walk?" By walking, you moron! Literally everybody knows how.

After a while, I just pretended not to be blind. I looked average and unremarkable, according to one of my more understanding dormmates. So, as long as I was careful enough and kept my head down (to avoid people seeing my weirdly colored silver eyes), nobody would notice.

Operation Avoid Idiots was a-go.

My first class? Math. Easy enough. Math was just numbers and calculations in my head. I didn't have to write, and just sat at the back of the class, pretending to pay attention but not really paying attention. That way, I wouldn't have to bore myself out listening to concepts I already knew. The teacher wouldn't call on me either, knowing my perfect test scores.

Chinese class was a little trickier. I was perfectly average at the class, despite being blind, and I actually had to pay attention to learn.

The problem was, most instruction was written on a blackboard. Which, to me, was completely useless. You couldn't describe a mandarin character, could you? (Well, you could, but only for about a third of the words that had definite symbols in them.) I had to learn the material after class with the same helpful dormmate.

And the various sciences were relatively simple. Just memorize the words the teacher was saying, parrot it back when asked a question, and avoid volunteering to go up to the board and draw the various diagrams. I didn't know anything about drawing them and somebody was going to have to teach me, or I would have to trace the ink on a chemistry book later.

Ironically, it was the easiest classes that bought the fact that I was blind back to attention.

It was an art class.

Oh, the irony of me drawing something random and not knowing what I drew. Turns out I had absentmindedly doodled a bunch of perfect cubes while thinking about mandarin characters and created some sort of neo-cubist art that I knew nothing about.

When the instructor asked us to show our art to other people, I didn't know what in the world I had on my paper.

And with that, all of my efforts to remain hidden failed.

…

…

The tournament was a breeze. They were mere children compared to Yun's thirty-year intellect and many years of practice. Most contestant had weird superpower things and the forcefield, but none of them had Chi or were as scarily skilled as Raven, so Yun dealt with them with no problem. He tried to keep his Chi usage as a secret so as not to lose a trump card against powerful opponents. So far, he just seemed like a terrifyingly efficient martial artist, and Yun hadn't grabbed anybody's weapon mid swing for the entire tournament.

One terrifying thing was that the opponents had, however, were guns. Guns. They put guns in their weird transforming weapons that would be an impractical engineering abomination without some intensely powerful generator that powered the servos that would switch the tools from form to form.

If one got a solid hit on me, he would've died. Yun was so lucky he decided to weave carbon fiber into his robes and put on a mask.

Speaking of the mask, he had doodled a couple more small flowers and vines onto it just for fun. It was boring waiting in the locker room for hours, waiting for people to go at each other like construction machines and comparing superpowers.

And at long last, it was the finals.

"Calm down, Yun. It's just a final battle. You've been in way too many math competitions to be nervous now, right?" Yun thought.

"And for our final match, the black horse candidate Yun Wu, nicknamed Shadow Flower by our judges versus Mistral City's very own Invincible Girl… Pyrrha Nikos!"

The crowd roared. People waved banners of the opponent's face and other various pieces of merchandise. There was not a single audience member that supported me. All of them came to the arena, wearing red and gold, something of a signature color combination for the opponent.

Come to think of it, the face did look strangely familiar. Had Yun seen it before.

"Probably not." Yun thought. "I might have just seen it on a cereal box somewhere."

Yun ascended the stairs and got onto the arena. His opponent did the same, brandishing a sword without a hilt. Her red hair flowed in the wind, and her armor was an atrocity that only existed in the shows his college dormmates described in his old life.

Yun walked forward warily, though one of his hands were behind his back and his other was fanning his face with his fan – weapon thing. Breathing in, he channeled Chi to his legs, front and hands in preparation to both attack and defend as the announcer poured more praise in for my opponent.

"3… 2… 1… begin!" The announcer shouted.

… (Another first person fight scene!)…

At the sound of the bell, my opponent positively rocketed towards me, gliding across the arena like she was unaffected by gravity. Her sword changed into a spear, the tip glinting in the sunlight.

I merely pushed on the ground with my left foot and drifted slowly to the right, dodging the blow and putting me within arm's reach of the girl's back when the blow passed. Reaching out with a hand, I located an exposed pressure point and my hand shot forward like a snake lunging for its prey. Surprisingly, she turned in mid-air and slashed at my exposed arm. I kicked off again and flipped away from the sword. The crowd cheered at my apparent retreat, but I paid them no mind.

That prize money would be mine and mine alone. If it meant beating this girl with terrible armor design, then so be it!

A shield was thrown at me like a discus, but I jumped in the air and jump kicked the shield into the ground. A good portion of the shield was stuck in the concrete, and to deal a final blow, I landed a palm strike on the upper edge of the shield as I fell down. The metal bent about fifteen degrees, making it obsolete for throwing but still a viable option for being used as a shield. The girl, seeing that I was quite far away, flipped a switch somewhere on her spear, which turned into a rifle, because of course everything had to be a gun. I lifted the shield out of the concrete and kicked the shield towards her. The shield covered for my approach, though I still held an arm over my head and reinforced it just in case. Bullets knocked the shield off course, but it was enough of a distraction for me to get in close again without having to dodge bullets.

I halted my dash and crouched, performing a sweeping kick and forcing my opponent to jump. Seeing what I did to her shield, she didn't throw her spear at me but instead let it remain in gun form, shooting at me to cover her descent.

I had to dodge a few bullets, but I came out unscathed.

She landed, and attacked with a flurry of sword strikes, shifting weapon forms again in midair.

"Up. Down. Right. Center. Lef-aah!"

The strikes whooshed through midair, and only training with Xin's lightning fast strikes left me intact. I was backpedaling all the while lunging in the direction the sword strikes were from to get out of range and backflip occasionally to avoid the occasional stabs.

"And the Invincible Girl has her challenger on the backfoot! What will Yun do now?" The announcer shouted over the cheering of the crowd, who were cheering for their champion.

"What would I be doing if I were fighting Xin?" I thought.

Memories of using bamboo as a terrain cover came to mind.

But there was literally no terrain at all around.

"Crap. I'm screwed." I thought as I lunged for the floor and dodged a wide sweep.

The weapon was once again shifted into a different form, this time into a spear. Using it akin to a quarterstaff, it was spun rapidly, and I had to dash backwards to avoid the blows.

But spears were predictable. Swords, well, slightly less so.

I opened my fan, and when the girl went for another stab straight to the chest, I straightened my stance and pinched the spear's blade between my fingers. I was pushed back a few centimeters, but I still stood firm.

Then, I whipped my fan through the air and sent out my kunai knives, aiming for her shoulder region. She literally had no armor there. I was forcing her to let go of her weapon or take the hit. She closed the eyes, as if concentrating on something, but opened them in shock. The kunai knives hit, and a red light rippled across the region. In her moment of weakness, I pulled the spear and landed an uppercut straight in the chin, then spun and kicked her in the torso. It was painful to kick metal, but my heavy boots protected me.

My opponent was sent away and hit the ground once before stabbing her spear into the ground and slowing her travel. Red light flashed all over now, and I looked up to see some sort of bar go down to yellow. Mine was still full.

"And with an astounding turn of events, our challenger has drawn first blood, with a ferocious combination of blows bringing Nikos's aura down to the yellow zone!" the announcer shouted over the gasp of the crowd.

What was it even measuring? Was it some sort of video game simulation that approximated our hit points?

Shaking the thoughts away from my head, I leapt up again and threw my fan, Chi guiding its path by circulating through the previously living material. The girl leapt up again with a hard look in her eyes and ducked the blow, before rushing at me again, too rushed to think and going for another stab to the chest.

I grinned under the mask, righted my stance once more, and clamped my hands together in a praying motion.

The blade stopped a centimeter from my sternum.

At this moment, my fan, under the influence of my chi, circled back like a boomerang and whacked her in the back of the head. This time, I pushed the spear forward after she was hit and stunned, making her land face first on the ground, before channeling chi to my legs and stomping, rapidly sending the energy into the ground, creating shockwaves that emanated from the impact point and forced her out of the arena, slamming her into the steel borders. The girl's armor left indents on the metal as she fell to the ground, barely moving

Red light flickered over her body, and her metaphorical health bar went down on the screen, before turning red. A red X appeared over her name.

The crowd was silent.

And I fist pumped mentally.

I had won.

More importantly, my prize money was secured.

…

"Yesss…" I moaned in pure bliss. "Yesss!"

Sitting in front of a noodle stand, I noisily slurped down the food. It was a simple dish, just being some ramen with basic additions, but it was the best I had my whole life.

Trust me, I would know.

Oh, the way the broth was seasoned, the tender meat yielding before my teeth…

It was a piece of heaven on this miserable planet filled with things that wanted to kill me.

After I received the cash prize, I got into the nearest store, bought some normal clothes (the black robes were rather difficult to put on after all, and were way less comfortable), a waterproof backpack, a lot of rice and flour, a ham, a fire-starter, and some canned vegetables, along with toilet paper.

Seriously. Leaves were getting old.

Shouldering the backpack and adjusting my black beanie (to finally cover that awfully showy white hair), I snuck out of the city by parkouring out of the walls at night.

Back into the wilds it was…

…(Now it's back to third person because of author sorcery)…

Yun missed having a bed.

Now, waking up under a tarp in a, frankly much more uncomfortable, sleeping bag, Yun looked at the terrible design of the currency in this city. Something just felt underdeveloped about the plain white card with the number on it, along with some sort of weird emblem.

Was it just some sort of minimalistic, cubic design that I had heard about?

After rolling up the tarp and tying it to my bag, then shouldering the heavy bag filled with my various food items and tools, Yun continued walking, thinking about my issues about money once more.

Turns out the cash prize was supposed to be given to us electronically, but since Yun didn't have any official records, Yun chose to take the cash prize in cash.

They only had a hundredth of the original cash prize, so that's what Yun received..

A thousand dollars. Enough to finance a trip, but not enough for something like a plane ticket.

At least Yun got himself an old version of the local equivalent of phones, something called scrolls. It was kind of a weird name for a holographic, compact phone, but Yun took it in stride and accessed the internet for the first time in his second life.

After looking up tickets to Vale, he realized that it was way out of his price range. The ticket costed 700 lien (which was the name of the local currency). After Yun bought his other supplies, he only had about 200 left.

"Great. Despite winning a citywide tournament," he thought, "I still have to hitchhike on boats."

Putting one hand behind his back while his other fanned himself in the infernal heat, he continued his journey to the east.

…

The entirety of Mistral was shocked that Pyrrha Nikos had lost.

Existential crisis rates rose among her fans. Pyrrha herself was surprised as well, because somebody managed to find a loophole in her semblance: just not use a weapon made of metal.

The question was, what were the knives made of?

Yun had left a bigger splash than he realized, shattering a certain heiress's world view and made one drunk person very happy by winning him a thousand-to-one bet that the person in question didn't even remember making.

But the biggest splash he made was in mistral itself. A city based on class divisions, it was firmly entrenched in the ideals of predestination, that what you were born in defined you as a person. With a backwater black horse candidate actually winning the tournament, these ideas and subconscious tracks of mind were challenged. Nobody would notice at first, but civil unrest would grow, adding to the chaos of the land.

Of course, Yun wasn't around to see it. He was somewhere in the middle of Anima right now.

And back to a certain former champion of the Mistral Regional tournament, Pyrrha Nikos. Currently in the training yard, she was massacring dummies by the dozen, still trying to analyze the fight.

How his movements were so unrefined, yet agile. Nothing about footwork explained how he managed to dodge the attacks or became able to clamp her spear between his hands and fingers.

Was it because of her spear being what it was? Spears were unyielding, fierce weapons that didn't change direction. They were easy to predict, but devastating once struck. Pyrrha had managed to circumvent this issue mostly by adding quarterstaff moves into her style. But against this opponent that flowed like water yet stood his ground like a mountain, quarterstaff moves weren't versatile enough to vanquish him while spears weren't strong enough.

Then were her options best fighting with a sword?

Probably.

Truth be told, Yun just got used to fighting people with spears and quarter staves.

Example: Xin.

Though Pyrrha wouldn't know, the best bet she had against Yun was actually the third form of her weapon: a rifle.

Yun only had short and mid-range weapons, but no long-range weapons. Without aura, Yun would be completely helpless and he would be forced to shore up and reinforce his robes so as not to be shot full of holes.

But the again, Pyrrha wouldn't know.

For the next year, Pyrrha would prepare herself for the next tournament. She had a new goal now, and even though she lost the fight, she would work harder and surpass Yun.

"I'll beat you, Yun! Next time, I will prove to be stronger."

She never accounted for the fact that Yun was just there for the prize money and would never return.

…

In the distance, Yun sneezed and got the feeling that another powerful person now wanted to fight him. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, sending shivers up his spine and making him want to crawl into a hole and hide himself.

He just attributed it to being in the shade for too long.

It couldn't be weirder than that family tourist group that were all wearing oddly realistic bunny ear headbands he saw back in the city.

**AN: Now that's a can of worms that's going to last for one entire chapter!**

**I finally squeezed out the time to write this chapter, but I'm literally going to be struggling in some lake from 8/12 to 8/22 because of some canoe trip I'm going on. Wish me luck!**

**Hopefully, the next chapter will be published in the next ten days.**

**Oh yeah, I also wrote that other fic on my profile. That was what I wrote in between the chapters of writing for this fic. I just had to edit it, finalize it, and publish it. I also have about 1000 words of an Undertale Rwby crossover somewhere on my terribly old laptop.**

**Right now, the v key isn't working (I had to copy paste that one), so expect my next chapter to contain plenty of typos and stuff. Please correct me if you spot any through a helpful PM or comment.**

**Thanks! Please Favorite, Follow, and Review! (I also had to copy paste that from my old chapters, if you were wondering.)**


	12. A2 C4 Migration

**AN**

**I have returned one last time for the next 15 (?) days. My schedule is very unstable at this point.**

**Enjoy the chapter!**

**If you want to see what I personally thought of this chapter, read the AN at the back. A lot of people just straight up ignore them (me when I'm reading a fanfic).**

**Also, a question that is frequently asked is: When is Yun going to learn about aura?**

**The answer is: Until he gets to Ozpin. Which will be happening next chapter. Which will unfortunately be delayed by 10-15 days. Sorry.**

Excerpt 5: Xin's Memory Banks: Mission Start!

"Your mission, if you chose to accept it," a robotic voice said, "Is to-"

"Wait, we get a choice? Then I refu-"

Xin was promptly punched by one of his teammates, a blonde haired girl with a really long name and a bad attitude. Most likely from Vacuo, she was a monster with a dirk and her two pistols, true to her roguelike style.

"Ow…" Xin groaned, picking himself up from the floor.

"Your mission, if you chose to accept it," a robotic voice said, "Is to go clear away Grimm in nearby Mt. Glenn. The duration of the mission will be two weeks and-"

"Don't die. Kill things. Blah, blah, blah." Xin said.

He was promptly punched again, and his blue aura flared up to repair the potential concussions he had obtained.

"Stop this madness." One Leonardo Lionheart said. "I liked you better when you acted more like a monk and less like a sarcastic failure of a comedian.

"Try having your whole worldview torn apart by a Grimm-worshipping cult and let's see how your personality turns out.." Xin retorted.

…

In the future, a cowardly Leonardo sneezed in his office.

…

Ozpin chuckled and ushered his team away from the mission-issuing robot.

"Now, now. Let's just focus on the mission."

"Stop patronizing us!" Xin yelled at his leader.

"You practically have the mentality of a child. It is no wonder that even our incompetent leader treats you as such." The blonde girl said, nose in the air.

"Even I agree with Evelyn this time."

Ozpin, Xin, Leonardo, and Evelyn. These four formed team Olivine. And like many other team names, they made absolutely zero sense. Where did the X even go? Were they trying to spell Olixine? It wasn't even a word, much less a color. To literally nobody' surprise, Ozpin was named leader. The seventeen year old boy seemed like he was seventeen hundred years old with the way he was acting. Leonardo was the reckless one, and Evelyn was the annoying one.

Xin was the comedic relief. He had changed a lot coming down from the mountain, and had taken comedy and pranks up as a distraction for himself to not focus on the blood spilt on his hands.

It was working, judging by his happy-go-lucky attitude and frequent annoying acts aimed at the annoyance of the team.

Still, like a weirdly functional family, the team still enjoyed each other's company, viewing each other as annoying siblings.

…

"I'M STILL NOT SURE IF THIS IS A GOOD IDEA!" Xin shouted, desperately hanging onto the edge of the aircraft.

"Relax. These parachutes work ninety percent of the time." The pilots said.

"THAT'S NOT REASSURING!" Xin screamed as Ozpin whacked his fingers off the jet with his cane and Xin fell from the sky, screaming as he went.

Xin ended up snagged on a tree in his half-deployed parachute, about two miles off course. Beowolves gathered at the trunk of the tree, scrabbling at the sturdy wood, as Xin tried to use his staff as a cutting implement.

"This is a truly great start to this mission." Xin said, sighing.

…

…

Finally, at the docks, Yun contemplated his escape routes from this continent.

Finally, he would be free of the ever-looming menace that was the multitude of people trying to kill him.

He would also be free of paparazzi.

To clarify, the media didn't know that he was actually Yun Wu, the person that won the tournament.

Turns out that tournament he participated in was broadcasted across the world, and the media was now putting out posters with his combat outfit across the place, giving monetary awards to whoever could get him to agree to an interview.

At this point, Yun was tempted to turn himself in.

Yun almost salivated at the thought of more money, but it might also bring along confrontations with his enemies. Thank whatever deity or deities of this world that he decided to actually purchase modern clothing. His beanie and hoodie were working wonders of assimilating him with normal society. He did have to keep his katana in his bag and his fan up his sleeve, but it was completely fine.

Yun walked onto the dock, discretely ripping off a poster requesting an interview from some tabloid website, crumpling it up, and tossing it into the surprisingly clear water. One would think that such a heavily industrialized world would have an adverse environment, but the water was still a healthy blue color. Maybe it had to do with that mysterious energy source…

There was only one ship in the docks. It was maybe because the ship in question was futuristic and gigantic, with a gigantic snowflake logo emblazoned over it.

" _Well,_ " Yun thought, " _At least it would have plenty of things to steal."_

Like the hardened criminal he was, Yun was not about to sacrifice his precious 100 lien for something mundane like buying food. He would do with eating raw rice and stealing other things from the ship's pantry.

Did cargo ships have pantries?

This was no time for thought. The ship's horn was blowing. Yun checked to see if his backpack was snug on his back before he flipped himself to the underside of the boardwalk that was the dock and held onto the cracks of the secondary layer of the construct, climbing towards the ship. After accidentally making a wrong turn and correcting himself, he flipped himself once again to the upwards side of the dock and jumped onto the ship, holding onto a latch handle, before finding an open window and sneaking in from there.

Now he just had to get to the cargo hold and stay there for the duration of the trip, then put himself into a container when the time comes.

…

Sneaking past military personnel was not fun. For one, he couldn't even pretend to be a civilian because _there were no civilians on the ship._

How frustrating.

For this purpose, Yun covered all of his white hair with his beanie and put on his black robes and mask, before slinking from shadow to shadow, even hiding in a janitor's cart. He managed to successfully locate the pantry and took a lot of salt and vegetables, before slinking off to the storage room. Thankfully, only a couple of security cameras dotted the place and Yun was able to walk on the walls above the terribly placed cameras.

Seriously, who puts cameras seven feet below the ceiling?

Unintelligent people, that's who.

…

The ship's commander was very confused. The sensors indicated that somebody came through the ship's window, yet nothing out of the ordinary had been spotted. The security cameras had caught nothing but his soldiers walking around the ship in patrol. Apparently, the pantry was also robbed, but nothing was detected in the storage area, even with all the motion sensing lasers situated in the cargo hold.

He would have to go get a new engineer if the security system was this bad on such a shipment.

…

Yun was now in a shipping container, sitting on his sleeping bag and tent.

What was he sitting on?

Gems. Crates after crates of gems.

In various colors that was probably off the color wheel for gems back on earth. This crate alone was probably worth billions.

Still, there was something off about them. His Chi recoiled from the raw power that was somehow in the gems.

Yun was probably sitting on a pile of explosives.

But honestly, Yun didn't care at all. These gems should be semi-stable to be in such a valuable piece of infrastructure, right?

…

Somewhere, Ruby Rose sneezed, and Weiss Schnee fought the urge to glare at her partner.

… **(Another first person POV because why not?)…**

It had been a week since I last saw any light. I was used to the situation, anyways. Being blind and all sometimes did come with its perks.

I had spent a week working on Chi manipulation and found that there was only a certain distance Chi could cycle out of him and still be able to come back, which was about an inch.

Like the heroes in the storybooks of the past, I was able to cling to walls by putting my palm onto it and lower the air pressure in the space between my palm and the wall. This was by no means an original idea (having heard the idea in some audiobook somewhere) but it actually worked for me.

At least I didn't have to run up walls when getting out of this steel prison that was a shipping container.

It was rumbling and turning a lot for some weird reason.

What was going on out there?

Searching for a handhold on the ceiling, I pushed the latch away from the wall, and for the first time in months, opened the container.

Oh, the lights! They burned my eyes!

Fumbling in my pockets, I found a ripped piece of cloth and tied it around my eyes.

Much better.

The world was pitch black, and to not fall off the container, I pressed my palms on the smooth metal and forced my skin to absorb some of the oxygen in the enclosed airspace, effectively sticking my palms to the walls and not making me fall off.

The container shook suddenly, and I almost fell off the edge if not for taking the proper precautions.

That being said, my skin felt like it was literally being peeled off by a rusty spoon.

Yeah. I probably shouldn't use that trick too often.

Slowly inching down, releasing and absorbing Chi through my palms, I finally reached the ground.

Now out of immediate danger, I tried to sense my surroundings. The platform I was on was vibrating slightly, and something was rolling beneath me. Somewhere, a whistle blew, and the churning of machinery filled the soundscape of the place.

I was on a train.

Was I really in the container for that long?

Leaning against the container, I waited for my eyes to adjust. My makeshift blindfold still let some light through, and I was making my eyes adjust slowly so as not to die of sensory overload.

Then I heard something. A metallic object fell on the floor and something exploded.

Oh, boy.

Why do I keep on ending up in these situations?

The sounds were from over there. I crawled onto a train car, fumbled for the hatch, opened it, and hung from the ladder that lead up to the exit.

"Perfect. Move up to the next car." A deep, raspy voice said. "I'll set the charges."

Charges? Were they some sort of villains?

"What about the crew members?" A girl's voice said, voice deep with concern.

Yeah. What about the crew? And the hitchhikers? If you blow up the train, I can't go anywhere.

"What about them?"

Ergo, I must stop the raspy voice.

"Yeah, and what about the hitchhikers?" I said, walking towards the voice. My eyes were still adjusting, so I still had the blindfold on, so I reinforced my ears and touch senses.

"Who are you?" The man said. His footsteps echoed on the ground, and he was probably squaring his stance to look at me. Something clicked, and that something may have been a gun.

I liberated my fan from my sleeve and fanned it out, before crouching down and preparing to move.

Then, more mechanical noises sounded behind the man. Something had dropped from the ceiling, and by the vibrations it sent through the platform, it probably had four legs.

"Not to interrupt or anything, but there's kind of a something behind you."

More footsteps. The man was probably turning.

"Adam!" The girl shouted.

The guns on the robot – _because of course giant robots had to have guns-_ began firing. I minimized my profile by presenting my side to the robot and began batting away the slow-moving projectiles that were the bullets in this world. A lack of gunpowder led to slower, but more powerful projectiles that exploded when they made contact. By coating my fan in Chi and focusing on diverting the projectiles, however, I could handle the bullets and not make them explode.

The man, dubbed Adam by the girl, ran towards the robot and drew something that sounded like a sword, before slashing at the gigantic robot.

Who even does that? What kind of idiot would hit a robot with a sword.

"Are you daft?" I yelled. "Stop charging the gigantic robot and get out of here!"

Reinforcing my fist, I punched the walls of the train car. My fist hurt like hell, but an indent on the wall was made. I then kicked the area surrounding the impact point and made that individual metal sheet fly off the train, before ducking down and exiting through the hole. Judging by the rapid footsteps that followed, the two were close behind.

The robot forced its way through the train car walls because of course it would.

"Hey, guys? Can we just agree not to kill each other temporarily? The bigger problem's in front of us."

The man grunted in affirmation.

The guns rotated on the bot before firing again. I lay flat against the ground and shielded myself with the fan again.

Don't judge me. I was effectively fighting a machine gun blind!

"Buy me some time!" The man yelled.

"What are you going to do, charge up a freaking laser beam? News flash, life doesn't work like that!" I yelled, rolling behind a crate.

But the girl apparently didn't question the statement and ran towards the robot.

"Oh, here we go again." I sighed.

Time to take the plunge.

I jumped out from cover and reinforced my whole body, before barreling towards the scraping noises and punched the robot, sending it back a couple of meters. I myself was thrown onto a crate.

"Now!" Adam yelled, and an ambient red flashed, the wind blowing off my blindfold. Surprisingly, my eyes were fine with this.

The robot literally disintegrated, and remnants of red energy floated into the air. The man that produced the energy still crouched in his finishing pose, flakes of red radiating from the red parts of his oddly edgy tailcoat and cloth that was somehow hanging from his belt. His katana glowed red and he wore a white and red mask with slits in it. He turned and was about to jump onto the other train cart

"Goodbye…" Someone muttered.

And then something was cut. Our section of the train cart slowed down, before the man knelt down in misery.

I slowly backed away and threw on my armored robes and slung on my backpack and retrieving my katana.

I heard another scream of rage, and the place flashed red before the red wave of energy cut everything around in half. I would have been too, if not for my reinforced robes.

Then, he saw me sneaking away. Perhaps dragging his fury of being abandoned by his comrades, he attacked, red katana flashing in the sun.

I was not about to fight the person that vaporized a robot when they were consumed with fury.

Blocking the blow with my arms, aided by the reinforced robe, I used the force of his swing and jumped, catapulting me backwards and into the tree line. Grimly, I noted that the contact point had been torn by the blade. My robes, the same robes that when chi-enforced, could stop bullets.

How strong was he?

Perhaps even stronger than another enemy of mine that wielded a katana and wore a red and white mask.

With this terrifying thought, I ran for the hills, feeling the fear course through me. Behind me, screams of anguish and annoyance could be heard, and waves of red energy wrecked the landscape, felling trees and splitting the ground.

I just ran faster, away from death.

This was an awakening experience. In all of my previous encounters, I had managed to come on top of or at least stand a fighting chance against all the other people I had encountered. The tournament only emboldened my self confidence.

Then, this absolute powerhouse came and shattered my sense of security.

Somebody who could generate red energy that disintegrated everything in sight.

Wow.

From now on, I was going to have to train harder. And fight more people to get stronger.

Because, to quote something I've heard somewhere, like hell I'd die!

This is my one shot at living a life of my choosing, and I will not let murderous terrorists be the end.

…

Sensing the fear of a certain robed boy and Adam's rage, the creatures of the shadows reacted accordingly. That is, to say, that they mobilized in the hundreds. Their red eyes glinted in the dark. Their bone masks stood out eerily against their black bodies. Spittle and blood of old victims dribbled from their jaw as they flooded out of the caves.

They were the Grimm. They were bloodthirsty, they were violent.

They were endless.

**AN**

**This chapter… by my standards… wasn't exactly the best. The writing quality is basically the same, but nothing really happens. It's more like those filler scenes that a movie director tries to make interesting but fails hilariously.**

**The main reasons for this are probably trying to describe Adam without using the word edgy. And, well, the impractical planning that went into this chapter. Considering my character's limited perspective (being blind and in China), the scope of his understanding was limited, and thus it wouldn't be in character if he described something the way I would.**

**Still, it's three thousand words.**

**If any aspiring writer has any comments and criticism, please do so.**

**And, about comments. If one is to comment and criticize, you probably should have a reason for it. If you just say "This sucks" and leave it at that, I would probably ignore it because you give me absolutely no indication of where to improve.**

**Just saying…**

**Anyways, favorite, follow, and review! Reviews are basically food for thought and motivates me to actually write and not just churn out chapters for robots to read. The reviews are what makes a community an actual community, not just someplace you post research papers.**


	13. A2C5 Navigation

**The chapter, as promised, has arrived. Precisely 15 days after the announcement. An announcement about going on a 10 day trip, if you all don't recall.**

**I just deleted the chapter containing the announcement because I know from experience that people don't like announcements that just last a chapter and require you to click again just to continue the story. Because people are intrinsically lazy and take the path of least resistance.**

**I really don't know what else to say in this foreword (other than maybe ask of you all to write a review), but that would be annoying. Enjoy!**

Exerpt 1: Traning Montage: Xin's Ego

**(1rst person POV of Yun because it is a training montage, after all.)**

Despite popular belief, Xin actually did have an ego. Even if his half-computer brain calculated otherwise. There was just that small bit that still made him human, that small bit that allowed emotions to occasionally trickle through the algorithm after that nearly fatal accident.

It showed through him when he was showing off his skills.

Even if I couldn't see his eyes, his faint smirk still told me that he held some enjoyment in aweing me.

And he had reason to be proud.

In retrospect, it was years ago that I first saw it.

It was after the initial shock of my training, during which I was absolutely destroyed by the first training session, that Xin actually showed me what he determined as "a satisfactory performance that won't get you killed by the first hostile you see".

Xin then proceeded to flit from tree to tree to show his agility, before literally punching trees into smithereens with no visible effort.

But what impressed me the most was his perception.

Walking up to the cherry blossom trees that Xin somehow had a certain reverence for, he tapped the tree with his staff.

I was prepared to cover my ears, awaiting the creak of wood splitting, before noticing that literally nothing happened. A few petals floated off of the flowers in bloom and a soft flutter of pink and white cascaded across the landscape.

Then, Xin stood in a ready stance, and as the first petal was about to touch the ground, struck.

The sharp end of his staff ripped through the flower petal.

It was incredible how he managed to detect the petal just floating in the air while blindfolded. It wasn't incredible compared to what happened next.

Xin became a whirlwind of black, his staff whizzing through the air at incredible speeds and, before long, a pink mist of petals shrouded the area. He had probably near-atomized the petals with the speed and power of his strikes.

I stood there, behind him, as he finished in an unintentionally awesome pose.

And to indulge my childhood memories of wanting to become a kung fu master (because who didn't?), I set myself a goal of eventually learning to do that.

What was life without hopes and dreams?

Basically life back on Earth, that was what.

…

…

**(More first person because it's way easier to write somehow :P)**

This was a terrible mistake.

It was just supposed to be a peaceful, calm hitchhike, no? Albeit slightly illegal. I didn't even steal anything valuable! It was just some food!

And _freaking terrorists_ just chose to waltz in and destroy literally everything.

Sometimes, it feels like the world is out to kill me. First with dark shadow creatures, then with many people wielding katanas and wearing white masks. Don't get me started on the abominations of engineering that were the gun blades that I heard many of my college classmates describe with fervor.

Now, limping back to the crash site, healing my damaged everything with Chi, I bled over the red grass and trees that mocked me by being so beautiful and pristine. I held my katana in one hand and used it as a crutch, while my weaponized fan was in a pocket.

Said crash site looked like a tornado had decided to dance in the area. Pieces of metal were strewn everywhere, and powdered crystals. I managed to find the mask I wore during the tournament and recover a severely dented pot. Its lid lay bent a couple feet away.

The weather was sweltering, so I took off my hoodie and robes before tying some paracord lying on the ground to the pot's broken handles to form a primitive sling bag.

After searching through the wreck for a bit longer, finding nothing but bullet casings, broken circuitry, and the terribly burnt remains of raw rice and bread. At least some of the salt survived, half of the small bag that I had of it scattering onto the ground among other crystals.

With nothing else to do, I followed the train tracks. I located the front of the torn train carts and walked from there, towards an unknown destination. To avoid the interference of a potentially murderous Adam, I walked quietly in the tree line so I could see the railroad but people on the railroad wouldn't see me.

I was glad for my white hair for once. My hair's white and the color red, along with the overcast sky blended in nicely.

I winced as I felt another stab of pain in my forearms, clearly residual internal damage for reinforcing to such a degree.

This was going to be a long trek.

…

As if sensing my despair, after I embarked on the long hike two hours ago, I was attacked.

Not by whom, but by what.

There were two of them, with fur black as night and red eyes glittering like rubies. I backed away slowly, fear clouding my mind, before they pounced.

I rolled out of the way and reinforced my body, tightening my muscles and holding the katana ready, infusing its short blade with Chi. The wolves pounced mindlessly again and I landed an uppercut on one of them before slashing the exposed torso of the wolf with all my might.

The katana was too dull at this point to pierce the wolf's fur, but my Chi certainly did. It entered through the point of contact and made flesh and bone flake away, not dissimilar to the effect of overcharging an object with Chi.

I observed the wolf slowly atomizing before turning my attention to the other wolf. To expirement, I infused my palm with Chi before grabbing the claw of a wolf and channeling its power into it. I circulated the energy through the wolf, only to find a lack of blood vessels. It was more of a blob of foreign Chi. For a moment, we both concentrated. I concentrated on overcoming the malignant energy while the wolf struggled to contain its obvious agony.

The other dissipating wolf snarled defiantly and tackled me again. I broke my stream of Chi and threw the other wolf at the attacking one. The two bodies collided in midair and collapsed in a heap, both of them slowly dissipating now. Taking my katana, I stabbed the two wolves at once. A sickening squelch sounded and black blood stained my blade as the wolves disappeared completely.

Holding my katana warily, I watched the black smoke for a while before walking away quickly.

Who knows what would happen if other wolves saw the smoke too.

…

It had been two weeks, and I kept myself going on sheer willpower.

I did have food and there was some sap leaking out of trees that I could tap and drink, but my injuries were worsening.

The trees I was walking among had thinned out as I exited the small mountain that all of the trees were on before staggering past a flat, plains area and crawling through a healthy, green forest.

I would stop to meditate and heal if I could, but occasionally more black beasts would appear out of the shadows. These days, they came in the form of bears and boars, with white bone masks and red markings. My Chi boiled at the sight of them and curled in defensively at the sheer amount sometimes. I had to slow my breathing and calm down into a pseudo-meditation trance as I crouched in trees and hoped the larger packs wouldn't notice me. If their numbers were few, they usually were more aggressive and attacked, forcing me to retaliate.

The worse thing about this was that if I attacked, I had to use Chi to strengthen all my movements (my circulatory system was that busted), and that made the damage worse. Faint red splotches slowly formed under my skin slowly.

Now, putting my katana in my belt and using an actual stick as support, I limped onwards, chewing on a mouthful of raw rice laced with a pinch of salt.

And then I saw it.

Was that… civilization?

I saw some sort of station, before seeing an indistinct shelter of some kind with other brown boxes surrounding it. Some sort of green flag waved in the air, with two cross axes in the middle.

There were no wooden stake walls surrounding the town, which probably meant it was not a bandit camp. There were, however two meter high brick walls that looked more like the kind of wall found in the town I had saw before reaching Mistral City.

I internally cheered, my whole body being too weak for speech, before hurrying up to the station and creeping inside the building.

It was still really early, and I had slept for a scant hour in the night so as to keep my guard up for as long as possible.

Nobody was in the station, though it looked clean and unabandoned. With my katana, I pried open a reinforced window before collapsing onto a bench.

I was safe. At last.

Finding this Ozpin guy could wait for tomorrow.

For now, I slept.

…

**(Third person POV once more)**

The morning shift janitor for the train station was very confused when he found a bruised and battered youth with nothing but a metal pot filled with rice on the bench. When he was woken up, he shouted in some foreign language before leaping up to a window and bolted out.

Was that boy somehow related to the train that came in with only half its cargo and an absolutely wrecked trailing train car?

He looked back at the boy, but he was already gone.

The guard sighed before walking to his office and grabbing the can of store bought coffee he had stashed there the night before.

From the open door, somebody else emerged. A figure shrouded in darkness and with cat ears situated on her head. Her amber eyes glowed as she seemingly disappeared in thin air, her image glitching out.

Moments later, the girl reappeared on top of the shed, watching the rapidly running figure of Yun escaping.

The girl's name was Blake.

She narrowed her eyes as she zoned in closer on Yun. It was the boy from the train, all right. Why he was wearing a blindfold or hitchhiking in a box of dust was a mystery to her.

Still, he had the audacity to sass Adam. One of the most feared white fang leaders in the world. Renowned for over twenty attacks all over Remnant.

There was no way that that boy didn't know who Adam was, right?

He was wearing a blindfold, though…

Ceasing her thoughts about the strange boy, Blake focused on the next part of her plans. Making it to Beacon. The new semester would be starting in a year, and trains rarely ran to such a large city from remote villages, given how dangerous it was to traverse large distances without investing in a very expensive armed car and hiring huntsman to guard them from the Grimm.

She was still destitute. And would need to hitchhike.

As she ran off into the shadows again, she thought about how to hitch a ride to Vale.

Maybe she could pull a leaf out of the white haired boy's book and hide in a volatile dust container? No, that was an idiotic idea. There was a reason dust miners didn't have their auras unlocked. One flare of the energy and the whole mine would blow to kingdom come, provided that it was a mine of considerable size and had floating dust particles in the air (a leading cause of lung degradation).

…

Yun arrived at a quaint looking town. The green flag was still fluttering, and Yun paused for a moment to admire it.

He had taken time to heal up and wash his hair so as to not look like a vagabond, before taking what cash he had left and buying the cheapest backpack he could find (it was third hand and slightly moldy, being sold at a flea market), but it worked.

At this point, Yun only had the pot and his robes, along with another empty bag. He kept his katana out because apparently several other people here were carrying guns or other weapons as well. Fitting, seeing that the black wolves that he had seen nearby would not hesitate to slaughter the civilians living in the fragile walls.

Yun leaned against a lamp post, the pot's rather sharp ridge rubbing uncomfortably against his back, and closed his eyes to analyze his situation.

He was in a random small town. He had no supplies, other than his cracked scroll, his weapons, and a pot. He was still injured, though they thankfully didn't show on his exterior. Fully healing these injuries, according to the book, should take about a month.

That was actually… less time than he expected. He felt like his liver had turned to mush and his spleen had ceased to exist.

On the other hand, he was on the same continent as his target. He was safe, as this actually seemed like a legitimate town (albeit a militarized one). And…

Nothing else. All of the good things he had achieved could be summarized in this one sentence.

" _Heal first, think later."_ Yun thought.

Yun stopped his frankly awkward rest and walked casually to a relatively small park. The metal gates that separated the park from the safety of the inside were currently open, and two guards stood near the stone pillars that the gates pivoted on, looking relaxed but yet still intimidating.

Yun walked past them without any trouble. They probably assumed that everybody inside the town was friendly, which was nice.

He did not want to find a group of tourists and blend in with them again, not to mention that there _were no tourists in the area._

Sliding towards a dense clumps of trees, Yun climbed up on a random, sturdy tree (which was most likely going to house him for the next three days as he read through the diary again) and began to ponder.

Reading the diary, Yun once again came upon a question that had plagued him since his arrival.

How was he even here?

Was this just some long, vivid, insane dream? Filled with kung fu masters, people with superpowers, and shadow creatures?

Was this even real?

Yun paused his reading and stared at the fluffy clouds lazily floating past him.

It seemed real enough.

Yun pushed the thoughts out of his mind and continued reading, but unlike the other times that he did this, the seeds of the questions remained.

_Why?_

…

Jaune Arc was having an existential crisis. Not one as severe as a midlife crisis. More of a "what is my purpose" type of thought.

He was sixteen this year. Almost an adult. Yet, he was unremarkable in nearly everything he did.

Grades? A solid B across all subjects. Sports? He wasn't athletic, but he wasn't unhealthy. At least he had good endurance. Hobbies? Watching TV and action movies. Eating… cereal.

Yeah. Not very impressive.

He had read all about his ancestors fighting in wars and stuff in the family tomes, and he did try to train as a hunter. His parents, though hunters themselves, told him not to pursue such an insane dream.

Hypocrites.

And like any slightly moody teenager, he went for a walk in the woods. The woods were nice. Calm and peaceful, away from society **(Because with teenagers, when is it** _ **not**_ **society's fault?).** Jaune relaxed on the grass and closed his eyes, trying not to think about what to do with his life.

" _I could always become a farmer…"_ he thought, " _at least I won't be driven out of business…"._

But where would he get the land to farm on? How did one farm anyways?

He opened his eyes, but squinted because of the suddenly harsh light.

Maybe he was just doomed to be mediocre. Get into an average college and live an average life, forever shadowed by the genius of his sisters and the glory of his family.

All in all, a disappointment.

He sighed as he entered the final stage of grief before just looking at that gigantic black bird swoop down at a nearby tree.

_Wait, gigantic black bird?_

Jaune sat up. If his knowledge from watching those action movies were right, that was a nevermore. A common variant of grimm, but nevertheless deadly.

He scrambled to his feet and ran, planning to warn the guards.

The nevermore squawked and dived at him. It was about the same size as him, by the looks of it. He dropped to the ground and the dive missed him, but the bird was relentless, and swooped down once more, its black body seemingly sucking in all the hope in the world.

He closed his eyes and curled up into a ball, preparing for the blow-

Before what sounded like a slap sounded right in front of him.

A white-haired boy in a hoodie stood in front of him, nose still in a book, though he pointed a strange, black stick at the grimm.

The bird, annoyed by the attack, swooped down again. Jaune was about to warn him when the boy fanned out his fan (so that's what the stick was) before flicking his wrist and sending black knives at the bird.

It was hit in the wing, and its flight slowed. Flapping its wings furiously, it only managed to chirped defiantly and flop around on the ground after it was bought down by gravity. The boy just walked up to it, stepped on its other wing, and stomped down on the bird's skull.

"Don't interrupt my reading." He said at the bird, treating it not as a killing machine but more like a minor annoyance, like how one would swat a mosquito.

He then bent down and retrieved his knife, before walking away at a brisk pace.

It was at that moment that Jaune knew.

He wanted to be a huntsman.

To save people, like he had been saved. To not disappoint his family. To look cool.

His parents had refused to train him, but this boy might, right? Grinning, he ran after the white-haired boy, determined to actualize his childhood dream.

**And… Scene!**

**Hope you enjoyed this chapter I rushed in five days. Please tell me any grammar mistakes you find.**

**Thank you for reading, and please Review, Follow, or Favorite!**

**And if it isn't clear already, I don't own RWBY.  
**

**Also, Chi is not actually aura. It's a breathing technique that channels the body's energies to specific places to strengthen it or heal it. The chinese like to view it as Chi, seeing Chi is their character for "air" and they view breathing as a cycle(like a lot of other things, like dynasties and moon phases). Yun was able to turn this meditation technique into something useful in combat because Remnant has a lot more ambient energy than Earth (it literally has elemental crystals forming all over the place) and Yun, whether he knows it or not, is absorbing ambient magic and turning it into ambient energy.**

**This is my own interpretation of Chi. It is by no means original, as many chinese action novels also utilize this principle (other than, of course, absorbing ambient magic) and make their characters into the kung fu masters we know and love in western culture these days. This concept has also been misinterpreted by anime and turned into the flashy light show we call Naruto or Dragonball Z (Not that I ever actually watched those things :P sorry).**

**Still, if it makes you happy, you can view it as an alternate version of aura.** **Yun is still going to get his aura unlocked and get a semblance, in case you were curious. And if you can guess Yun's semblance, I'll give you a shout out in the story and keep your username on my profile, because I'm sure only a few people would know what I've been hinting for Yun's semblance to be.**

**-Spirit**


	14. A2 C6 Orienteering

**Greetings, my readers. You weren't expecting this, were you?**

**Here we go! Enjoy the chapter!**

**Also, if you have any complaints about Jaune's characterization, tell me. I don't know how it's coming off to a person who isn't involved in writing the story and I don't have a beta.**

Excerpt #6: Xin's Memory Banks: Mission Continued

Dropping to the tree from the snagged parachute, Xin leapt up again and stabbed his staff into a tree, hanging from it and analyzing his enemies.

The beowolves scrabbled up the trees and tried to bite at his ankles. The Ursai roared and punched the tree trunks.

Basically the normal garden variety of grimm. Xin sighed before reaching into his robes and getting out a solitary, blue gem. His hand glowed blue for a second, filling the dust gem with alien light, before throwing it at the crowd of grimm. The gem exploded in a burst of power, and the grimm became incased in ice. Their red eyes glowed defiantly before traces of blue seemingly seeped into their bodies and their eyes turned to a dull grey.

Xin took out his staff from the tree before jumping onto the ice and sliding down, landing on the ground and yawning. It was as if he jumped twelve feet into the air and threw explosive gems on a daily basis.

Oh, wait. He did.

It so happened that Xin's semblance, Perfect Efficiency, made it so much easier. His semblance made it so that other than for defense, Xin's aura efficiency was greatly increased. What took other huntsman hundreds of units to do only took him one. Boosting physical capabilities and healing, for one, and using his aura as an offensive weapon with physical objects as conduits for another.

In short, it made him a cockroach. Incredibly easy to subdue, but incredibly hard to put down for good. Annoying as hell. What made him even more annoying was that he chose to not engage his defensive aura and instead use his aura to heal the damage done, mitigating the damage much more efficiently than using aura for defense.

Xin looked at the compass he bought, tapped it a couple times to reorient the needle, before finding north and referencing his mental map of the general mission area. Off he went, strolling through the woods and practicing jokes and pranks that required a certain sleigh of hand to pull off. Robes made things easier (sleeve pockets were the best thing ever for card tricks and pulling out the unexpected items), but actually accessing the right pocket took a while.

He grinned, imagining the looks of annoyed exasperation on his teammate's faces.

Pranking was a good distraction from his past. If you're focused on not getting brutally injured by your teammates after a particularly irksome prank, you won't focus on the blood on your hands.

Stabbing a beowolf in the throat and watching the black monster dissipate, Xin's mindscape suddenly went back to the hellish temple. Blood dripped from the tip of his staff and his white robes were dyed red as the buildings burned and the whispers of the damned echoed around in the air.

Xin shook his head and continued on with getting to the mission site.

Another image flashed through his head.

He stood shocked, in a doorway, as he saw his mentor impaled through the chest.

More images of the temple flashed through his eyes. Xin was bought down by the sudden barrage of bad memories. He knelt on the ground, one hand covering his eyes and the other holding onto his staff.

A growl sounded behind Xin, and he lashed out. His staff was thrown at the beowolf trailing behind him. Aura flaring randomly, Xin's thoughts and memories were broadcasted across the forest. Every grimm in the area caught an invisible scent and trailed towards him, causing the infested forest to seemingly rattle in action. Trees were shoved roughly by the traversing beasts, causing leaves to cascade across the place and the shadows to roam all over the place.

Xin staggered over to pick up his staff, and struggled to stay coherent.

_De_ _**at** _ _h._ _**De** _ _ath. D_ _**eat** _ _h. Deat_ _**h.** _

Whispers rose from the forest as images of Xin killing his fellow disciples back on the temple were forced up and seen again by Xin. Though, instead of it being in Xin's perspective, it showed… something else.

A roomful of people donning a white and red mask. Tentacles with barbed tips waving. A disembodied woman's voice giving the command of _**kill.**_

More images flashed through his head. A desolate land of black, white, and red. Pools of tar. A dark castle.

A chant of disembodied voices rose in his head.

_**K** _ _ill_ _**. De** _ _at_ _**h.** _ _S_ _**la** _ _y._ _**Blo** _ _od. Fe_ _**ar** _ _. H_ _**atr** _ _ed. Betr_ _**ayal** _ _. M_ _**urd** _ _er._

The quietest whisper, though, was what hit Xin the hardest.

_Y_ _**ou** _ _r_ _**f** _ _a_ _**ult.** _

" _No. It couldn't be. It was the traitor cult's fault! They betrayed the monastery and killed all of us!"_ Xin thought.

 _ **M**_ _ur_ _ **der**_ _er. You_ _ **r f**_ _ault._ _ **Be**_ _tra_ _ **y**_ _al. D_ _ **ea**_ _th._ The disembodied voices chanted on.

Xin's mind fell into a haze of red. With a roar, he cut his staff in the air, sending his aura out as a wave, bisecting the approaching grimm.

 _J_ _ **ussst**_ _gi_ _ **ve**_ _u_ _ **p.**_ Something hissed.

Xin continued to fight. An ursa was savagely punched through the stomach, and a couple of grimm had their masks shattered with berserk blows. Slowly, he began to wind down. His movements grew sluggish and weak. He turned his head around frantically, in a blind panic.

Stumbling, he whacked another beowolf across the mask before falling onto the ground once more.

He wasn't feeling fear.

He wasn't feeling anything. It was just… numb.

He watched the black and white spider approach cautiously, other grimm corpses dissipating around him. His vision was blacking out. Fuzzy patches formed, and the spider became nothing but a black blur.

He reached for his fallen staff again and swatted the spider, eyelids drooping.

As he heard a distant crack of bone mask shattering, a mysterious weight that he never knew was there vanishes. With a smile on his face, he closes his eyes, and sees a man with white hair stride into the clearing.

**(Oh, boy. That was a long flashback. Took like 2 hours to write and research, along with figure out how it would influence his limited character arc. By the way, the spider thing is actually an unnamed spider grimm from the RWBY manga (I just found it on the wiki lol) and it uses mental images to weaken its prey before striking. It's pretty cool and you can go look it up.)**

…

…

That blonde boy was supremely annoying to Yun.

Trying to read his book in peace, he was forced to shift trees as the boy chased him, shouting about getting trained to be a hunter or something.

Yun was trying to read, for god's sake.

In the end, Yun ended up sneaking up to him, freezing him by locking his joints in place via Chi and pressure points, before sitting in the clearing before the boy and watching the boy gurgling desperately, eyes wide in panic.

Did you know there was a pressure point that disables the voice when pressed? Of course you didn't. The contents of action novels, and, well, Chinese herbalist guides, the inhabitants of this world would never guess that such quirks of biology exist. To them, it would be like magic.

At last, peace was his. Yun read into healing techniques and joint dislocation as the man who wrote the diary detailed an infiltration attempt that included him dislocating all of one guard's limbs and pressing the right pressure point to do something similar to what the blonde boy experienced.

After an hour, during which the sun was setting, sending a red glow over the sky, Yun finally unfroze the boy by sending a pulse of Chi through him and normalizing the imbalances that were caused by him locking up his joints.

The boy immediately collapsed into a heap.

"Why do you want to be some sort of hunter anyways. Sounds like a terrible career choice, considering all the black beasties that roam the land." Yun said coldly, still irritated at the boy.

The boy recoiled in fear, placing as much distance between himself and Yun as he could.

"Relax." Yun said, changing his tone to a casual one. "I just froze you up for an hour by pressing some pressure points. You're fine physically, other than maybe being a little stiff."

"W-what even are pressure points?"

"Basically points in blood vessels that can be pressed to restrict blood flow or massaged to increase blood flow. What I did was I drastically slowed your circulation in such a way that you didn't have the energy to move and stayed in your position. The effect would have disappeared after four hours anyways." Yun shrugged.

"That sounds cool." The boy said, eyes shining a bit. "That sounds a bit like what ninjas say in the movies!"

"Yeah, it does." Yun said, chuckling.

The two shared a laugh, though the boy still looked a bit sour.

"So, why do you want to become a hunter?" Yun asked.

"I want to be a hunter so I can become a hero! My parents don't think I can and I want to prove myself to them!"

"And you decided to ask me for help?" Yun said, eyebrows raised. "What makes you think I'm capable of teaching you how to hunt? And how is a hunter even a hero? They just hunt wild animals."

"No, not that kind of hunter! The kind of hunter that fights grimm! Goes on missions to save towns and villages!" the boy said, as if exasperated at Yun's lack of knowledge.

"What even are grimm? Some kind of poetry?" Yun asked. He could recall something like this in his literature class back when he was still in his old world and attending high school. It was something about analyzing foreign texts.

…

After a long conversation, during which Yun was filled in with some terminologies, namely what grimm were and what hunters did. The boy, whose name was Jaune, got out his scroll and showed Yun some comics about hunters.

"… And you want me to train you to be some sort of superhero?" Yun asked Jaune.

"Basically, yeah!" Jaune said brightly. "So when do we start?"

"No. I am not." Yun said, narrowing his eyes in a menacing way.

"But why not?" Jaune said, whining a bit. "You were trained too, right?"

Traumatic memories involving Xin hunting him in the night haunted Yun's mind. He shivered.

"You clearly are not ready."

"Not this again! My parents said the same thing!"

"You couldn't even defend yourself against me." Yun said, sighing. "And there are much stronger things out there."

"I'm not that bad!"

"I immobilized you with four strikes."

That silenced him.

"It may sound cliché, but it's a harsh world out there. You're not gonna last outside these walls. There are people with monstrous powers out there that you wouldn't even imagine."

More silence.

"You'd do better to just stay home and enjoy life." Yun said, turning and walking away.

Jaune sat there, an odd empty feeling filling him. Was he really so bad that nobody even wants to train him? Was he really that hopeless?

He clenched his fists and went back home, unwilling to accept his own weakness.

" _I'll show him."_ He thought. " _I'll show him I'm strong enough."_

…

**(First person POV)**

"I challenge you!" Jaune bellowed, hefting his sword and shield clumsily. They were finely made things, really. The white blade (an impossibility with metallurgy itself) with yellow accentuations glinted in the sunlight, and the golden cross guard was an intricate piece of blacksmithing. The shield had a mechanical feel to it, yet it seemed very durable.

"Really?" I smirked, from my perch on the tree, still looking at his finely made weapons.

"Of course!" he said, "And if you defeat me, you shall have to train me."

I sighed. He wasn't going to go away without a fight, was he?

"Very well, I accept your challenge. But if you lose, you will not bother me again." I stated, bookmarking the old diary with a fallen leaf.

I did want to try out more of the hand dislocation methods taught by the book, and even if I wasn't fully healed, using these minor Chi techniques shouldn't stress me out that much.

"I accept!" He stated, then got in a stance, that by first glance, wasn't very stable.

I unfurled my fan and casually stood there, one eye closed and the other peering at his wary figure. It still felt weird going into combat without wearing my reinforced robes, but this should be quick.

He yelled and charged at me, shield haphazardly guarding his front and sword waving in the air. His heavy footsteps sent vibrations throughout the ground as I turned off my habitually activated sensory enhancement. It was completely redundant in this scenario.

He took a swing at me and overextended. I took a step back, before stepping to the left and kicking his leg as his body tipped forward from his residual momentum. Faceplanting, he got up, rubbing a bruised face.

I just stood where he was a second ago and continued to do absolutely nothing.

Dropping his shield and holding his sword in a two handed grip, he charged again, dragging the swords in the dirt.

"You've been watching a lot of movies, haven't you?" I mused, thinking of the cliché villains in the novels that pull that trick of storing momentum.

The swing came, and it was a rather ferocious one from a civilian. I got into a fencer's stance (one foot bracing behind and the other pointing forward, with each feet perpendicular to the other), and reached out to grab his sword.

I was still pushed back by his momentum, but I wasn't injured at all. His sword's blade was right between my fingers, like the fights back in Mistral.

"Good attempt."

I tapped the sword blade with my other hand, sending a pulse of chi through the sword. He grimaced in visible pain as the skin on his hands reddened, a tell-tale sign of bursting blood vessels. Nothing serious, but still enough to disarm him. He let go of the sword and I dropped it, before kicking it aside. The sword flipped in the air before sinking its point into the earth, quivering.

He tried to punch me. I just stepped back again before grabbing his arm and throwing him to the ground.

"Still, you don't have the skill or strength to pull off any of the moves you think you can."

Another punch. This time, I sidestepped it before tripping him again with the same method as when he overextended.

"What makes you think that you can grow stronger?"

He groaned, before slowly struggling to his feet, standing shakily.

I punched him lightly and sent him tumbling to the ground again, falling on his back.

He got up again, eyes barely open.

I chuckled.

"You aren't particularly smart or strong, but at least you have persistence."

He went for a shoddy right hook. This time, I threw my fan at him. It hit him hard in the chest and knocked the breath out of his lungs, before rebounding up into the air. I caught it and turned, walking away.

"And honestly, that's all you need to get stronger. After you get up, follow me. I need a dummy to test some new joint dislocation techniques on anyways."

…

**(Jaune's POV)**

Somehow, I've survived in this hell for three days.

"Please, no more." I begged, on my knees. My body bore the bruises and welts from the other unspeakable tortures I had gone through.

"It's for you own good." The voice said, sending shivers down my spine.

I complied with the dark, twisted whispers.

I did another pushup.

"And that's twenty five, Jaune." my supposed mentor said, meditating beside a tree with one eye open and an annoying smirk on his face.

I collapsed in a heap into the grass.

"Uggggggggh…." I groaned, knowing that the inevitable continuation of my training would come after a brief break.

For the past two hours, I was handed a stick and told to defend myself against my teacher, wielding another stick like a staff.

Who knew that wooden sticks could hurt so much. Wielded by somebody _younger than me_ , no less. Seriously, he was fifteen, and I was sixteen! _How was he so good at fighting?_

Still, I shivered, imagining what my mentor, Yun, had endured under the training of _his_ mentor.

His teacher used a metal staff.

"Sensei, when are you going to let my fight with my sword and shield? It's the only decent weapon that I have."

Another weird thing about my mentor was that he made me call him "sensei", whatever that meant.

"You know, I once heard a saying. It takes a hundred days to train with a saber, a thousand days to train with a spear, and ten thousand to train with a sword." Yun said whimsically.

"You have a katana." I pointed out, looking at the suspiciously short weapon leaning on the tree he was sitting under.

"And I never trained with it." He said. "I don't even have an official style."

"Then how are you so good with a staff?" I complained, still feeling the bruises.

"You learn a thing or two after having a teacher that only uses one for ten years."

"Oh…" I said, remembering his pain once more.

"Did he force you to do push-ups too?"

"Didn't need to." He shrugged.

"Whaddya mean?"

"The farm work took care of that."

"You grew up on a farm? Where do you even come from?"

"Somewhere around Mistral."

I stared at him.

"How did you even get here?"

"Hitchhiked."

"And why are you here in vale?"

"My mentor told me to look for somebody called Ozpin to complete my training, or whatever that means."

"Do you know who this Ozpin is?" I asked him, curious.

"I think he forgot to tell me…" He said, forehead wrinkling in frustration. "He just said he was somewhere to the west, and left it at that."

"Maybe it's part of the trial? You know, a test of your wit or something?" I suggested.

"Maybe…" Yun muttered.

We sat in silence for a while.

"So, tell me, why do you have to get stronger before this year ends?" He asked me, evidently curious.

"Oh, there's this place called Beacon, and I-"

….

**Cut!**

…

**A little something extra:**

_For it is like leaves that we surrender before the winds of fate. Through this, we become a pawn of destiny and yield before its whims. Futile in nature and ensnared by mortality, I release your soul, and aid thee, in your journey into the light._

…

**Glorious! Another chapter done in a mere six days!**

**Again, follow, favorite, and review! You have no idea how much it means to me.**

**Also, if you have any complaints about Jaune's characterization, tell me. I don't know how it's coming off to a person who isn't involved in writing the story and I don't have a beta. This statement is also at the beginning of the chapter, for you people who were probably too lazy to read it there.**


	15. A2 C7 Resfebr

**AN: It is I, the author of this fanfic! I have returned with yet another chapter, found during my quest to lengthen the tomes of Yun's Journey.**

**In case you guys don't know what the chapter title means, the word (Resfeber) is a Swedish word, and it basically means the anticipation of going on a journey.**

**Enjoy! And please favorite, follow, and review. It really means a lot to me.**

Excerpt #7: Old Memories: Dorms.

Dorms were always a hassle to navigate. With changing environments every day, I routinely tripped over the towels, clothes, books, and other random things left around.

To avoid awkward situations (again, humans were idiotic animals by nature), I usually slept earlier and got back to the dorms earlier, and generally avoided all social contact. To them, I was probably just that introvert bookworm that didn't do much.

Still, it wasn't that bad.

Until the bane of my existence came into the dorms. It took the thin sheet of peace and quiet that separated me and the three other inhabitants and tore it to shreds, before throwing it into the void and exorcising it to the depths of hell, into the grasps of Yama, and beyond the reach of the Jade Emperor.

Anime.

Whatever that abomination was, it was filling the dorms with sounds of gunshots and high-pitched squeals. When the episodes of torture were over, there were still fervent whispers about, whatever the Japanese terms they were mumbling (something beginning in 'w').

The theme songs were the worst.

Was it just me, or were the theme songs just, uh, about twice as loud as the actual show?

One particularly loud one got on my nerves a lot. Something about humanity is in danger or whatever. It sounded really awkward, with hard metal mixed with a soft woman's voice. Truly an abomination and a mockery of proper music.

After the show began and sounds of more gunshots and various punches and kicks, and an announcer saying something about a colosseum, I decided I really didn't want to know what they were watching. Gladiator shows with guns and swords?

Probably some

I'll stick with my audiobooks, thank you very much.

…

I gagged when consuming such a vile concoction. What was this poison?

Instant noodles, that's what. Without any of the taste of real flour, it tasted instead like burnt plastic with salt all simmering in hot water.

I sighed before finding out where the trash can was before carefully lowering the vat of pure evil into the basket (I did drink the soup mixture, though. My dormmates would complain if I put water in the trash cans.).

I was trying to save money, but instead I had wasted it on these toxic noodles that I went on a perilous journey to buy just so I wouldn't have to spend my already limited amount of money on buying expensive cafeteria food. The food in question costed five RMB per meal, and fifteen RMB per day. My parents only made an estimate of 10 RMB per day in profit with the farm.

Needless to say, we were in a rough situation. Even if we didn't have to pay for tuition, the food cost was what was bringing me to bankruptcy.

I did thumb through my money, feeling the different textures and quality of paper.

Damn. Only a bit left now. About 100 RMB, a week's worth of food.

Then, the door opened, and my pensive expression was caught by the anime loving trio.

"Hey dude, whatcha thinking about?"

"Money." I said, sighing.

"You out? Just ask your parents to send some more."

"…My parents are farmers. We don't have the money…" I muttered, fidgeting a little.

"Whassat? Didn't hear you there."

"My parents are farmers. We don't have the money. This is all I have left." I said in a very quiet voice.

"How'd you afford the tuition, then?"

"Scholarship."

"No worries. We got your back. Take this."

He put something in my hands, feeling it, I recognized it as a 50 RMB note.

"I can't accept this." I immediately said, trying to hand it back. Hands forced the note back into my lap.

"Dude, my dad's a business owner. I get a thousand in cash every month. Just tell me when you need more. You may never talk, but you're still our dormmate."

A thousand… every month?

I got up, pocketing the money absentmindedly, before walking to my own bed and sitting down. That was more than my family made for three months!

That night, finally sleeping after studying for tomorrow's tests, I thought, _"Maybe people aren't that bad after all."_

They were annoying, true. But they were helpful.

…

I eventually paid him back. Even if it meant eating nothing but bread and apples for two months.

…

…

**(More 1rst person POV because I'm trying to write fast and get Yun to beacon)**

Training was getting more and more interesting.

I had my apprentice, Jaune, throw rocks at me (Somehow, he seemed very eager to do so.) while I stood in front of him, blindfolded, and tried to catch the rocks and throw them at a nearby tree while not getting hit by the projectiles. We had dropped the formalities and Jaune now addressed me as Yun, not 'sensei'. It just felt awkward for some reason.

The rocks made a faint whizzing sound as the soared through the air, making me strain my ears to identify them. Thankfully, Jaune still gave noticeable audio cues when he threw the rocks, making my job a lot easier.

Catching the last couple rocks before doing a spin, throwing the rocks in the direction of the tree, before kicking the final two in the wrong direction.

Taking off the blindfold and blinking a couple of times to adjust, I looked at the two rocks in front of me imbedded in the earth.

"Still can't get the last two, huh?" Jaune said.

"Yeah." I sighed, taking a deep breath and energizing myself. I leaned back and sighed, relaxing in the autumn sun. The forest, then green, had turned into a brilliant spectrum of color. From faded green to amber yellow, scarlet red to chocolate brown, the sheer beauty of the place overwhelmed me.

Back home, there was a lot more forest fires and a lot less living trees. On the other hand, this _nature appreciation area_ had a lot more regulations (e.g. not starting fires in them to cook). For food, I had Jaune bring me stuff from their pantry.

Seriously. Jaune's family had a nine people in total and nobody was going to miss a box of cereal from the twenty that they stocked up on.

I usually slept in their woodshed. Jaune would let me in and I would sleep on a bunch of logs with an old blanked I managed to get from a homeless shelter.

Life was a haphazard thing these days. I missed the old mattress back in the farmhouse in mistral.

Shaking myself out of those thoughts, I got up and forced Jaune to do his strength training.

The sounds of complaint soon rose through the clearing, but nobody was there to heed them.

…

"How… are you so strong?" Jaune finally asked, the question that had been plaguing him.

"Well, again, I did do farm work and did a ton of hellish training-"

"No, but how do you run up trees and do things normal people can't? Like leap 7 feet in the air and stuff."

"Oh, that's Chi."

"What is that?"

"Chi is a traditional breathing technique. It is used as a self-strengthening technique in temples and for martial arts practitioners. The technique is supposed to actively regulate oxygen flow to go to parts of the body and reinforce them, aiding them in functioning. It's pretty useful. You can heal wounds in mere days and strengthen organic materials enough for them to stop bullets and even make plants and trees grow faster. It's basically your own life energy."

Jaune was silent.

"You're telling me that you had a secret energy source that heals you and strengthens you, and you never told me of this? Why didn't you?"

"It… never came up." Come to think of it, I should have mentioned this earlier.

I sighed.

"Alright, kid. Let's try and get your Chi up and running."

"Why are you calling me kid? I'm a year older than you!"

"Psh, details."

…

"So, what I have to do is to visualize the breaths I take as energy and make it complete a cycle within me?"

"Sounds about right."

"That's actually really vague."

"It's not that bad. I'll guide you through it."

I sat down in a meditating pose beside Jaune, and put a hand on his shoulder. Sending a wave of Chi through his body, the energy flowed through his eight major vessels as I spoke about cycles and balances, which was how I began my experience with Chi.

"Think of it like this. Imagine your breath like the seasons, endlessly cycling throughout time, bringing life to the earth. At first, it gives life to you, and at the end it takes it away. Then, imagine your blood as a conduit for energy."

…

Something within Jaune changed. With the spark of Yun's life energy providing a spark, Jaune's aura, already bursting with energy because of the hopeful state of Jaune's soul, answered the call to action.

…

A sudden white glow filled the clearing. Jaune was the source of it, and I have absolutely no idea what the hell was going on.

"What the fu-"

…

It turns out I had somehow just given Jaune one of those annoying force fields that all the people back in the tournaments had.

I tried doing it to myself, repeating the same philosophical jargon I said to Jaune just to get him thinking about breathing.

It didn't actually work. Figures. Other people can get overpowered abilities, but I'm stuck with a more inferior version of whatever the forcefield thing was.

"Wow. I feel so much better. Lighter… even." Jaune exclaimed, still in a haze due to the influx of energy. The buildup of bruises that had plagued him had now been erased in one glow of white power.

"So the forcefield heals wounds, blocks attacks, reinforce objects, and even makes you stronger? And it happens almost instantly?" I exclaimed. "This is so unfair."

"Wanna spar?" Jaune said, a confident grin on his face. He did have a reason to, now with a forcefield and a month's worth of experience fighting.

"Sure." I said, "Having a force field just means that you'll last a little longer. Do you even know how to use the energy?"

"We'll have to find out." Jaune said, firing my own signature cocky smirk back at me. Jaune got his wooden stave from nearby (I had carved it about two weeks ago) and got in a ready stance.

Kicking off the ground in the same motion (Jaune had memorized a lot of my moves because of the sheer amount of times she gets beat up), we rushed at each other.

Still, I had a lot more experience under my belt, and I wasn't going all out on Jaune.

He thrusted his wooden stave at my torso first first. He didn't overextend, just testing the waters with his new amplified strength.

"First mistake: never attack first." I said, winking, before grabbing his arm and making him overextend, before pressing several critical pressure points on the back lightly and sending him stumbling forward. White light flashed on his back, and he turned, without any noticeable effects from me activating the blood flow restrictive pressure points.

"Okay… so force fields negate the effect of activated pressure points. Good to know."

"My arms did freeze up for a second though." Jaune said, flexing his shoulders and holding his stave at the ready again.

"You should still be harmed by offensive Chi, though." I said, taking a step back and beckoning him to come forward.

This time, Jaune was more cautious, stepping forward slowly and keeping his sword parallel to himself, making it a lot harder for me to grab the weapon and disarm him (That did happen multiple times in the past).

I just kicked a clump of dirt up into his eyes.

Yelling, he dropped his weapon and frantically got the gritty substance off his face as I drop kicked him before tossing him away.

Jaune got up from the ground and surrendered, putting both his hands in the air, before clearing himself of the dirt and lying on the grass again, exhausted.

"So, how does it feel to have a forcefield?" I asked him, crouching down near him.

"All of your blows hurt so much, but I'm not actually injured."

"Good." I grinned. "Now get up."

Jaune looked at me, terrified.

"Having a force field just means you can spar more before collapsing. Pick up that staff and get ready."

Jaune whimpered, before complying.

I grinned, and stopped holding back against him. I always wanted to know how pulling a Xin in training felt. And it felt so… relaxing.

Jaune screamed in terror as he dodged a kunai knife flung from my fan by a hair's breadth.

…

**(Back to third person because I have standards)**

Winter was here. And Yun was shivering in a cold, dark room.

A very cold, and very dark room.

Where was he? He was still in Jaune Arc's home's lumber shed. It was a drafty place, with several holes in the walls and leaks in the roof, allowing the slowly melting snow to drip into the place.

Once thing was for sure, this place definitely wasn't made for comfort.

It had been two months since Jaune had acquired his forcefield, and training had progressed well. Jaune had taken up the sword and was now using it in spars, despite Yun's teachings saying that a sword was the hardest weapon to master.

At least Jaune ditched the shield. It was a cumbersome thing, suited for medieval warfare but not for person-to-person combat.

Apparently this school Beacon was starting in seven months, and the practical exam was about five months later. Jaune had improved leaps and bounds, and he was lasting three minutes in spars now. Truly a

Yun had proudly noted that Jaune had managed to absorb some of Yun's unorthodox style. The first part of the unusualness was them having to wait for a minute to start spars (because neither of them wanted to make the first move), before compromising and attacking both at once.

Jaune also had to learn how to manipulate his force field so that it _wasn't always healing him,_ allowing Yun to practice dislocation techniques on a person. It went smoothly, with Yun learning how to reverse the process after two days.

Yun did call it a success, but Jaune was reluctant to let Yun continue experimenting with his limbs before he bribed Jaune with the prospect of the art of dislocating limbs. It did take a couple of weeks for him to master, and Yun had to fix several of his joints several times with great difficulty.(It couldn't be healthy, but Yun still had to fulfill his promise).

After careful consideration, Yun decided to leave this little town. It wasn't that it was a bad place, it was just that he wasn't any closer to finding this Ozpin guy than before. He was on the right continent, but he had also stayed in the same place for three months now. Who knows where his target would be then?

A big city was probably a good destination. The more people there were, the higher probability of Ozpin appearing. Besides, he could probably get a job as a mechanic or something (The legal age to work here was sixteen), and he probably could just fake his age and scrape by.

But for now, he stayed in the cold, dark shed, waiting for dawn to arrive and the snow to stop. In an effort to keep himself warm, Yun increased his heartbeat with a clever use of Chi, increasing blood circulation.

Still, it was freezing.

…

It was finally spring. The torturous three months of winter were over (Yun had to spend entire days meditating to avoid freezing), and Yun prepared to leave. Along with gathering food, what spare clothes Jaune had (Yun was about half a head shorter than Jaune, which was fortunate for him), and planning a route, Yun also wrote a tiny little booklet of training regiments and sword fighting techniques copied from the old diary.

At this point, Yun was tempted to worship the diary as a knowledge god. He had missed _so much_ during his first read of the diary (because he didn't understand what half of it was even about) that he didn't catch the little facts about Chi scattered around.

Apparently, Chi really was your life force, and the realization of the futility of your actions along with an understanding of the cycle of balance would aid you in "unlocking" the energy. Go figure.

Once Yun packed his stuff up, all of it crammed into the previously moldy backpack (the winter's cold had killed all the growing moss), he said goodbye to Jaune and walked out into the wilds again. He found the old train tracks and continued walking down them, singing old songs from his lifetime to pass the time.

At least he wasn't slowly dying to internal injuries this time.

Looking for a train to hitch a ride on, Yun walked off into the sunset, leaving safety behind for the prospect of success on his quest. Still, he _knew_ that something would go wrong. It wasn't a question of if it would happen, just a question of when it would happen.

**And there we have it, just 1 more chapter for Act 2! Then, the Beacon arc can finally begin!**

**Criticism** _**with sound arguments** _ **are always welcome.**

**Anyways, Favorite, follow and review!**


	16. A2 C8 End of the Beginning

**Here it is… the final chapter to Act 2.**

**I seriously didn't plan for both acts to have eight chapters, but whatever.**

**Enjoy! Follow, favorite, and review. It's always good to have motivation to write, and seeing the stats of the story increase makes me happier. ;)**

**-SpiritOfErebus**

Excerpt #8: Going Beyond

College.

A gate to success that my grandparents parents were denied. Graduating high school when the cultural revolution rolled around and bared its teeth at the generation, they were denied entry to colleges among all of their year despite graduating with decent marks. Instead, they were sent to remote farms and branded as class traitors, never to lift their heads from the farms again.

When the revolution was finished, they couldn't get back to school. They had their aged parents to support and property to maintain.

Story of their life for every single Chinese student for four years, with schools and colleges closed.

Now, though, it was 2020

Things were different, for once. The future was bright. And I had finally graduated from high school without starving, garnering too much attention, or tripping down the stairs and getting a concussion.

My old dorm buddies had places to go, so we kept each other's addresses before going our separate ways. One went to intern at his parent's company, another went to an arts college overseas, and the last one got to work as a doctor.

After three years of living in the same dorm, I still didn't _see_ the appeal of anime.

Arriving in a new city by bus, I stumbled off of the vehicle and… hold on a minute.

I had a map of the city. The problem was, I couldn't read it.

Well, this is awkward. And oddly familiar.

Standing in the middle of the streets, I had to find my way again. Luckily, I knew this would happen. That's why I arrived a week early, after all.

Choosing a random direction, I walked forward. I'll make it to the campus eventually.

…

…

Leaving the town, I hitched a ride on a slow train. Waiting in the brush until the train had passed, I jumped onto the trailing train car and sat there, leaning against the closed steel door of a passenger train cart.

It was spring, and the snows of winter were just melting. I could still see the frost lingering on the branches of the trees, water dripping off from the tips of the newly sprouted leaves, all hosting a light green color. The grass peeked out of the cover of grey fallen leaves from last year's autumn, some still a faint orange to remind us of the vibrant colors of flame that the leaves once were.

The sun was still near the horizon, barely peeking out from the blanket of clouds but already casting a soft yellow glow on the grey clouds.

With nothing else to do, I just sat there and admired the landscape.

There just wasn't a lot to do when traveling.

I missed my old audio player, missed the tales of adventure, the lectures about chemistry in history, and the stories about conquests of old.

The diary had ceased to be the catalog of a bold adventurer. Across the pages and the years in the author's life, he had withered into a lonely, old man in the middle of nowhere, writing down the secrets to his techniques in fear of them discontinuing and death claiming his soul before his ancestor's legacy was passed on.

I had stopped reading when I approached the end. It became an incessant rambling of his various health issues, of fluctuating Chi flow and dulling eyesight.

I wasn't that afraid of death. Having been through the process once, I wondered if death and life were just an endless cycle. Death and rebirth, darkness and light, etc. cetera. Maybe the Buddhists were right.

Allowing the confusion to whir in my head about the nature of our existence(for once), I continued waiting for the winds of travel to take me somewhere.

Life really involved a lot of waiting for me. In my first one, it was waiting for crops to grow and bus rides to end. Now, it was waiting for the train tracks to end, winter to pass, and to finally stop my endless strife of traveling and reach my goal of finding this one guy.

The train's wheels continued to clank on the slightly rusty tracks, and I sighed.

…

We were finally at the next stop.

The city's incredibly tall walls were as white and smooth as polished marble, with green buttresses flying from the inner layer of walls, forming a unique, castle-like visage. A green flag with cross axes and a laurel wreath around the two weapons, it looked like something out of a fantasy novel.

After the train stopped and some sort of tunnel with heavy steel doors opened, we entered an underground passageway, fluorescent lights flickering. Emerging out of the darkness and into the strange architectural choice that was the station, I blinked twice before jumping off the train and onto a platform, before walking away casually.

The guards didn't even blink when I passed. Good.

I emerged into a city that felt like Hefei all over again. The capital city of my province had the same amount of traffic and people. Citizens chatted with each other as they strode along, living their domestic lives.

First things first, I was going to look for information. Hopefully the library had public computers (Ansel, the village I was last at, didn't.). After getting a map from the train station, I located the library, walked a couple of blocks, and entered the gigantic structure.

It was a building made of glass panels and a steel frame, the panes tinted blue and the frame painted green. Holographic panels filled the area, with people standing or sitting in front of them, navigating whatever the equivalent of internet was here. I walked up to a machine that was currently inactive and activated it by pressing a white button on some sort of camera. It sprung to life, and a blue square suddenly flashed before me.

_Initiating bootup sequence… Loading…_

I grinned. Information, acquired.

 _Welcome to the Vale Library Public Computer._ The screen read. _How may we help you?_

I typed "search engine" in the applications search bar. It came up empty.

Okay. Weird tech. I still have to figure this out.

Finding a… surprisingly normal file explorer, I found the search engine, which was called "CCT database", somehow. Weirdly enough, Wi-Fi was still called Wi-Fi here.

It was nothing like using a scroll. I still had the discount device in my pocket. It was registered to me, but it had a more straightforward system. It had a normal safari-like app that people could use to access various websites. Sadly, the scroll was out of power. I had tried to find an outlet but apparently those things didn't exist.

Maybe the catalog computers were just old. Anyways, time to read up on whatever I can.

The most searched thing on the catalog was Beacon, the huntsman school Jaune was talking about. Maybe I could start there, and see if I find anything about the grimm, the force fields, and superpowers. Finding Ozpin on the web would just be plain lucky.

**(One minutes later…)**

Yun stared at the page for Beacon Academy.

_Beacon Academy. Location: Vale. Current headmaster: Ozpin. First name never revealed._

Wow. Just… wow.

Apparently, Ozpin was headmaster of the most famous huntsman academy in Remnant. And I never even knew.

How did Xin forget this? It sounds like something _important_ that would _identify_ somebody and make it much easier to find him. By pure chance, Yun had managed to wander into the same city that Beacon academy was near. Thank god.

Then, he read the location marker for Beacon.

It was still really far away.

_Location: Amid the Emerald Forest, a location where grimm frequently spawn due to an unknown reason. Civilians are advised not to enter the forest. If they do so anyways, Beacon claims no responsibility for the death or dismemberment of any who enter. There is an airship dock at the academy's front gates, which is how students and the professors commute to and from the place._

_Beacon academy also is near_ _ Forever Fall _ _, a forest known for its vibrantly red leaves, red grass, and an infestation of Ursa grimm._

Forever fall.

That place seemed familiar.

…

Before exiting civilization again, I needed supplies.

Yes, again.

A backpack that's not falling apart was required, along with a spare pair of boots, more stuff like needle and thread (to repair his frayed robes and disintegrating boots), food, water purifier, water jug, tent, sleeping bag, a whetstone to sharpen his extremely dull katana, a new black beanie (because my white hair was too obvious in anywhere that was not a city), among many other things. It was going to be a long shopping spree.

Besides, I wanted to lay back on the temporary shelters and travelling for a while. I was going to rest for half a year, wait for Jaune to get here to apply for Beacon, and apply for official documentation.

…

Nobody was going to believe that I was _fifteen,_ had no parents, and had been wandering around Remnant for a year. With no relatives or organizations taking care of me.

Well, time to take a walk into the shadier places of town. There had to be a seedy bar somewhere.

Putting on my most respectable clothes, I applied for a job as an intern mechanic at an all-purpose repair shop. I applied for a job, got accepted after correctly assembling a couple of basic motors they had put out for a test, and got an advanced paycheck. Thankfully, it was a fairly decent paycheck (given that mechanics were in high demand for who knows what reason), and I managed to get about 3000 lien per month. The boss, whose name was Jade, was a man in his fifties, having calloused hands and usually wore a white dress shirt splattered with machine oil, was a nice guy.

The advanced paycheck was just 1500 lien, half of the monthly wage. I took this opportunity to buy more accessories (A blue hoodie with a kangaroo pocket, some black sports pants, a cheap watch, actually new backpack, and new sneakers), I put all of my spare clothes in the backpack, ditched my old pack and the dented pot, and put on the new stuff in a back alley somewhere. I did keep the old tournament mask though, just for the memories. Surprisingly, it still hasn't dilapidated that much.

Ah. New clothes. How delightful.

After waiting a couple of hours, night fell over the place. The shattered moon emerged as the sun hid itself. The moonlight overshadowed me as I walked down the barren streets. Keeping my head down and a hand on the fan in my hoodie pocket, I proceeded cautiously and followed the sound of loud music.

True enough, the front door of a seedy bar was slightly ajar, and leaking the sounds of the techno music I was hearing.

I darted through the door and slunk from the shadows, before entering a crowd of teenagers socializing and stood a while away from them, close enough so that the average bystander would consider me part of the group.

Blocking out the annoying music, I focused on looking for people with a bit of martial training. Since this was probably the establishment of a gang, the boss should usually be the strongest. True to my reasoning, I found him.

Wearing red shades and the tallest out of all of the various goons across the place, he wore what looked to be an expensive vest, red satin tie, and silk dress shirt. He was also wiping a glass down.

I approached the man, shifting past several crowds of dancers and enforcers. Leaning on the bar, I prepared to strike up a conversation.

"Hey, boss man." I whispered.

"Huh?" the big gang leader said, putting down the glass and looking around cautiously. He was clearly not used to being snuck up on.

"Over here." I whispered again, establishing eye contact. My heart beating rapidly, I steeled my nerves and gathered my thoughts. This was a mob boss. Who knew how many guns would be pointed at me if I made one wrong move.

"Whaddya want, kid?" he grunted, returning to wiping his glass.

"You know where to establish an identity? I'm kind of in a sticky situation here." I said, grabbing an empty glass and holding it just to set the scene of a bartender talking to a customer.

"Aren't you a bit too young to get into this kind of trouble?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Drink?"

"Just a soda." I said, smiling, handing him the glass.

He reached below the bar and got the hose that was probably used to mix carbonated drinks.

"How old are ya, anyways?"

"Probably sixteen."

"Whaddya mean, probably?" He asked, passing me the drink.

"No officially recorded birth date. Village destroyed. Raised in the wilds. Stuff and things like that." I said, taking a sip. It felt nice to finally have a sweet drink for once. The last time I had anything this good was a year ago, which I remember to the ramen. "Oh, that hits the spot."

"So you just need an identity, huh? No chasing from important people? Anything shady like that?" He asked.

"The media did want an interview with me some time in the past. Something about beating the invincible girl." I said, shrugging.

He gave out a small chuckle.

"Kid, the only person that's beaten Pyrrha Nikos in a fight in the regionals would be Yun Wu, the Shadow Flower."

"That's still my nickname?" I said, almost spitting out my drink. "Jesus. I knew the flower on the mask was a mistake. Take a look."

I got the mask out and showed it to him. He picked up the old piece of carved and painted wood, before taking note of the three flowers doodled near the right temple of the mask.

"Nice cosplay attempt, kid."

I shrugged, before taking a drink. Then, I almost spilled the drink all over myself as I was rudely shoved away.

"Rumor says it you're the best info dealer in town." A girl's voice said, taking my old spot. I sighed before sitting back and watching the interaction, seeing what another teen could get out of this person. The girl was a blonde, wearing a brown jacket and a ridiculous waist cape. I scoffed. Teenagers in this world. How weird can you get?

Seriously, what was it with teenagers and weird getups? I swore I saw a pair of girls in white or red feather hats and dresses, but with green eyeshadow. Really, Remnant?

"What is it with kids and asking for things from me today?" the man said, sighing. "First, that orange headed menace with his weird sidekick. Then, a boy who's asking for an identity and now you."

Reluctantly, he got out of the barkeeping station before leaning on the counter next to the girl.

"What are you looking for, blondie?"

"This woman." The girl said, getting out a scroll and showing a picture of somebody to the man.

"I haven't seen her around." The mob boss said, shrugging, and preparing to walk away.

What happened next made me scoot back a seat. The girl forcibly turned the man around and grabbed his… family jewels.

"You DO know." She sneered, and you're going to tell me.

"Listen, blondie, I-"

"Call me sir!" She said, as the mob boss winced in pain.

I winced in sympathy, though still enjoying the show of the boss being manhandled by a teenage girl.

"Uh… sir… I've never seen this woman before. And if you want to make it out of this club alive, I suggest you let me go… now!"

The enforcers swarmed up, wearing black top hats, red shades, and suits. They were holding… red katanas, fire axes, and guns.

Yep. Bad idea to anger the mob boss.

Wisely, the girl let go. The mob boss sighed in relief and turned, walking away, clearly exasperated.

"Come on, Junior. Don't be so sensitive." Wow. The mob boss's name was _Junior._ Intimidating. "Let's kiss and make up, okay?"

While saying that, she clenched her fist, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Uh… okay…" Junior said, bending down foolishly.

He was immediately socked in the jaw. Flying back, he was stopped by the bar table and rattled all of the drinks on it. I got my shaking glass and took a sip of it, watching the man's goons get beat up by the girl, whose bracelets had turned into… shotgun gauntlets?

Wow. These people have terrible Operating Systems on their computers, but they have transforming jewelry? That's weird.

"Hey, kid." The boss groaned, looking at his goons suffer. "You're pretty good in a fight, right?"

"I'd say I'm not that bad." I said, smirking. He was clearly desperate for some help.

"If you prevent the girl from wrecking the club, I'll forge you the identity."

My eyes twinkled, and I put down my glass.

"It's a deal."

Getting out my fan, and enjoying the fact that the man's widen (my weapon was broadcasted across Remnant once, and an information dealer definitely should remember that.), before getting to the fight with a flying leap and knocking one of her punches off course.

"Well, well, well… Who are you?"

"Just a guy from out of town." I said, shrugging while fanning myself. "You know, I'd like it for you to keep the damage to a minimum. Some people actually enjoy this kind of place."

"Are you one of his goons?" She asked, getting in a fighting stance. "

"No, but helping him benefits me more." I said, sighing. "I have something important to get."

"I'm always down for a good fight." She said, grinning wildly. "Wanna dance?"

I sighed, and took a step back.

"Ready when you are."

She shot her shotgun gauntlets behind her (no doubt to generate momentum) before aiming a punch straight at my face. She was also entirely off of the ground.

I smiled. Easy.

Sidestepping, I grabbed her arm before throwing her forward. She was slammed onto the ground and got up again, completely fine.

"You're a tricky one, aren't you?" She said, winking, before advancing much more cautiously. She fired her shotgun gauntlets, and I sidestepped again to avoid it, before starting to spin in place and catch the remaining bullets. Luckily, shotgun bullets were actually way slower than actual bullets.

Doing this kind of things when you can see are just so much easier.

Flinging the bullets back at the sender, I crept closer while she was focused on dodging the thrown projectiles, before blitzing forward, locking up her arms with a lot of Chi applied to pressure points (Because if you used enough chi, the forcefields, actually called aura, wouldn't affect those impediments.).

Now behind her, she turned and tried to throw a punch, but her left arm locked up and she just stumbled. Shaking her left arm, she punched with her right. Still, she was off balance.

It was incredibly easy to grab the relatively weaker punch, rapidly press more pressure points on the arm to make it lock up, and then gently nudged her forward.

She tripped again, trying to stop her fall but failing.

"What the hell is this?" She said, eyes gaining a red tint. I gulped. That expression reminded me of certain enemies…

"Pressure points. Ever heard of 'em?" I said, still trying to act casual but ready to flee at a moment's notice. Eye color changes to red were _never_ good.

She struggled once more, but the activated pressure points just wouldn't give way, my Chi no doubt still lingering in there.

"Now leave. The effect passes after two hours." I said, getting a kunai knife out of my fan and holding it menacingly.

"Or I might not be as friendly."

Channeling all movie villains everywhere, I tried to make my eyes cold as they can be.

She paled, turned, and fled, walking out of the club awkwardly. I turned back to the barkeep, where Junior slowly backed away from me.

I stopped doing the glare and laughed.

"Was I really that scary?" I said, chuckling.

Junior wasn't amused. "It was like you were thinking of the best way to flay me." He shivered.

"Anyways, let's get that identity going." I said, sitting down at the bar again, noticing how the customers had fled when the fight first began.

"Y-yeah," Junior stuttered, turning to make a phone call.

…

After that fiasco, during which I finally acquired an ID as a citizen of Mistral, Yun Wu, 16 in age and with a birth date of June the twelfth. According to my files, I was an orphan raised on a farm, before I competed in the Mistral Regionals and decided to travel the world with my acquired funds.

The story didn't sound that sketchy, considering that it was actually true. After Junior gave me the all clear for my new identity, I downed my soda before walking out of the club casually, looking at the blond girl struggle to maneuver her motorbike.

Whistling, I walked away.

I was not going to deal with somebody on a motorbike trying to fatally injure me. Not to mention that she looked extremely familiar…

…

Somewhere far away, Raven Branwen sneezed.

…

It had been a couple of months for me, staying in the city. Actually living under a roof was doing wonders for my psyche, and I became lazier and lazier every day. There was not rigorous training to do, nobody to beat up, just motors to fix and servos to rewire.

A lot of servos. Seriously, the contraptions that some weirdly dressed people bought in were just bunches of servos that made a hunk of metal transform either into the shape of a sword or a gun.

Was it some sort of cosplay? Animes back in his old world had a lot of gun blades.

Whatever. As long as his customers payed well, his paycheck wouldn't suffer.

Jaune had come by, visited, gotten a couple of his sword's servos cleaned, sparred a bit (he was still absolutely destroyed within two minutes). Jaune headed off for the Beacon tryouts, and Yun regretfully did not tryout for Beacon.

On one hand, he would be going to the school to meet Ozpin. On the other hand, on his official identity, it said he was sixteen. You needed to be _seventeen_ by the date of the tryout to take the test.

Yun sighed. He should probably have researched the age requirement earlier. He would've made himself seventeen instead of sixteen, but it's too late now.

Jaune had sent him the bullhead route to Beacon, and he was going to have to walk through Emerald Forest and Forever Fall to get there. The total distance was about sixty miles (they had to take a freaking airship to get to the school, after all), and it was going to take… about a week to get there. Assuming I don't get lost or attacked. There were grimm in that forest, after all.

I had already bought the camping supplies and food, along with a new pair of heavy duty leather boots (a good pair of those really ate up my paycheck). I was just waiting for good weather at this point.

The only problem was that it rained at least twice every week, the moisture from the seas being kept around Vale because of the mountains behind the city.

Meanwhile, robberies had been at an all-time high, and Jade, my boss, raised my paycheck once I revealed that I could actually fight.

Nice. Though it meant that I had to guard the shop 24-7, it wasn't like I was already just camping in the mechanic shop. In fact, it just gave me a legitimate opportunity to stay.

…

Finally! A week free of rain.

Saying goodbye to Jade, I packed all of my stuff into a rather large backpack, sharpened my broken katana, and went out the gates to find the Emerald forest. It's time for the last stretch.

I still don't know why I'm doing this (other than to "complete my training"), but it's nice to have goals in life.

Clutching the medallion that Xin gave me tightly, the silver Sakura flower reflecting the sunlight, I stepped out of the darkness of the tunnels and out of the city, into the dangers of Emerald forest.

I was as ready as I would ever bee.

…

…

_When the_

_Light is running low_

_And the shadows start to grow_

_And the places that you know_

_Seem like fantasy_

_There's a Light inside your soul_

_That's still shining in the cold_

_With the truth~~~_

_The promise in our hearts_

_Don't forget ~~~_

' _I'm with you in the dark…_

**(Delatrune Soundtrack: Don't forget.)**

_..._

**A/N: And that's another act done!**

**This is the longest chapter so far (With 4.4k words), and it's covered a lot of ground. I figured you guys didn't want to hear about Yun working in a mechanics shop (It's really kind of boring and there's going to be a chapter about Yun building his future weapon eventually :P), so I just skipped four months and got us straight into the final stretch of Yun's travels, part 1.**

**About the bar fight scene with Yang, the RWBY franchise doesn't exactly give a canon date of when Yang goes to the bar and fights a bunch of people, so I just found a date that made sense.**

**The timeframe: Beacon tryouts are in May, the bar fight was during March (Which was also during spring break for students), and Yun is now going into the Emerald forest after three month's rest in early September, which is about when Beacon starts. I'm saying all of this to clear up confusion.**

**How will the teams be made, some may ask? Read to find out!**

**Seriously, guys. Thank you for 100+ followers. We've also hit 9000 views on this fic. I never thought this story would be so successful.**

**Life's become really busy again so updates are going to be about two times slower after this.**

**Thanks for reading! Follow, Favorite, and Review!**

**-SpiritOfErebus**


	17. A3 C1 The Persistence of Memory

**AN: The Beacon arc begins!**

**Words cannot describe how exited I am for Act three.**

**Brief summary of what happened is at back of chapter. Done in omake style.**

**Anyways, enjoy the chapter!**

Excerpt 9: Wanderings of a Blind Man

I was spending the week doing what I do best.

Memorizing the city layout. Sadly, I could not interpret stuff printed on the type of paper that was slightly more like plastic. The surface was simply too smooth.

Thus, I must explore. Drawing a layout of the city and asking people where I was (incredibly awkwardly). They were probably glaring at me like I was an idiot but answered anyways, a noticeably irritated tone evident in their speech.

Still, I wrote them down on a notebook I had appropriated from a wastebasket. I can feel judging stares from somewhere, but if you're poor, you do what you have to survive and thrive. And so like an invasive plant, I went scavenging. Complimentary pens, baubles, free water bottles, free backpacks? Yes, please.

Marketing was truly wondrous when you were attending just for the products they gave out. And even if they were low quality, It didn't matter, judging by the sheer amount of pens that I had amassed. I should have about twenty right now.

Shaking my head, amused, I wondered why homeless peopled didn't think of doing this. If they sent out a couple of people every day to collect pens and sold them in a shopfront, how much money would they make?

Sadly, this train of thought was shut down by the law that necessitates the use of a business license to sell things. Not to mention the various impracticalities of having homeless people that were illiterate run a business.

Oh well, a college student can dream, can't he?

…

**(Third person)**

The boy walking around with a notebook, asking questions was an odd sort of child. He had eyes so bright, yet they never seemed focused on anything. They were a beautiful, silver tint and positively glowed in the sunlight. It was almost unnatural.

Yet, there was still a tone of sadness when he spoke, as if he was used to having to resort to ask passerby's just to find his way in a city, and not just getting a map.

Sometimes he would almost walk into a street lamp or trip on some sort of crevasse in the sidewalk, and pedestrians would try to warn him. It would almost always be too late, however, and the accident would occur, the boy suffering from several bruises and cases of worn clothes. Every time, he would get up with a sort of sardonic smile on his face, before bending down and fumbling for his dropped items.

Even if the boy looked homeless, there was something different about him. There was a drive to succeed. There was a determination to try and remain cheerful and unaffected by his own circumstances.

And although the boy would never know it, he would become a WeChat article sensation.

…

They found his corpse floating down the river in the center of the city, near the outskirts. About a year later. A bloody wound was on the back of his head and his wallet was gone. His silver shone still shone even when his corpse was fished out, and a sad smile was on his face, even if his skin looked whitewashed from floating in water for two days.

His information was found and released by some concerned villagers in AnHui and former dormmates. He was called Mei ZhiLing, and he was blind. Grandson of two people who had suffered from the cultural revolution, he had gotten into both a rather famous high school and college via scholarships. And he was blind.

A welfare fund was raised on various social media platforms to support his parents, whose grief was recorded by live TV and immortalized, giving even the muggers that pushed him into the river guilt trips.

After that fateful event, the family shored themselves up much like that boy did when he tripped and fell, before continuing to farm like nothing had happened.

There was only so much that people were willing to donate, and all of the proceedings of the donations went to purchasing some land and erecting a simple gravestone on it.

_Here lies Mei ZhiLling_

_May his soul find rest in a better place._

…

…

**(1rst Person POV)**

I was not having a good time.

Why, weird world? Why do you keep on sending these grimm things to kill me? This was not fun.

Luckily, I had put on my patched armored robe on after entering the forest. The bad part was that I had to run through this huge forest that I had allocated a week for to pass through, which meant no breaks for me.

" _A week without stopping to eat. Just grand_." I thought as I saw another pack of wolves join the chase. I was feeling relatively okay for now, but after the hours dragged on, they ceased to have meaning and blended into one great blotch of running through the dark, evading the bone white claws of the endless horde of monsters.

The broken katana had, true to my designation to it, shattered. It had proven its worth by killing about five of the creatures before shattering. It was a shame that Chi didn't work that well with non-organic materials. It was _life_ energy, after all. Chi did work to destroy metals and such by simply overloading the materials, but that was pretty much the opposite of what I wanted to do.

Now, armed with a blunt fan against must be a hundred dark beasts, I stumbled through the night, the dim moonlight illuminated my past just barely. I still occasionally tripped on the roots of the various trees.

It was slowly driving me mad. I considered climbing up a tree and taking a break, but the amount of grimm here were just insane, and they could probably gnaw down the tree and eviscerate me in my sleep.

So, no.

The only times I really stopped during the day was during a water break. I would put on an extra burst of speed and lose the creatures for a bit and drink a bit of water. Then, they would mysteriously find me once more, snarling and growling. I would have to run across the river (It was possible, considering that water was technically an organic substance and a copious amount of Chi could be used to manipulate it in such a way that it temporarily formed a vaguely solid surface upon impact). I would eventually fall halfway, the concentration that is required by this task too great and have to suffer wet boots until the copious amounts of running and somersaulting drained all the water from my boots.

During the night, when there was little to no warning about where a river was, I usually fell in. Not a good experience, I tell you.

The grimm chasing me knew no concept of hunger, fatigue, or thirst. They were mindless machines, seeking only destruction.

Seriously, what kind of sadistic god created such a creature? How did it even make sense? How do they fade after they die? How to the metabolize? What is their purpose? Why do they come in different forms?

Deciding to seek the answers later (As I always did when thinking about impossible things), I continued to run forward and live. Having lost all semblance of direction, I just ran towards the rising moon. This forest really was a death trap. Why was it called a somewhat artistic name such as the "Emerald Forest"? It wasn't even filled with evergreens!

This world was so weird. Is it too late to go back?

…

It had been five days since I began running from the beasts. I felt like I was going to collapse. Oddly enough, this seemed to have happened to me a lot in this life. First, when I was nine, escaping from the bandit camp. The other time was following the train tracks to Ansel, Jaune's hometown. And now, I was running for my life from the hundreds of monsters behind me. Without an effective weapon against them.

Seriously, the only sharp edges I had on my weapon now were the tips of the kunai knives, and those were _not_ being thrown because it takes approximately a week to carve out each one from carbon fiber. Not to mention I didn't even have any carving tools. Even if I did use them, I only had five knives. They were probably not enough to kill five grimm.

The worst part was the hunger.

I legitimately had no time to stop and _eat._ It wasn't like the grimm didn't eat or perform biological functions, and were mindless killing machines designed to chase and kill unsuspecting travelers and bring the end to civilization as we know it.

The forest had shifted from green to red, and leaves were cascading all around me as I trudged through the red grass, the grimm still in hot pursuit.

Despite the red surroundings, everything just seemed so… grey. And cold. My legs had ceased to be legs and more like mechanical limbs doing what they're told, numb to anything else.

And then I heard it. Somebody yelling.

Was that… people?

Salvation was at hand!

Running towards the noise, I dodged a stray claw swipe and continued what I hoped was the final stretch of the journey.

…

( **Jaune's POV)**

Jaune was… freaking out when the gigantic bear thing stood in front of him and roared, baring its claws.

Behind him lay Cardin, the bully that had targeted his… normality… since day one.

After he had passed the combat test exam (the exam robots were not even close to the difficulty of sparring with Yun), he got into Beacon…. And was promptly destroyed by every. Single. Person. There.

He even tried fighting with the sword style, but nothing was working.

All he could do was wave his sword vainly and take hits. He would put up a decent fight (depleting _some_ of his opponent's aura), but he would still collapse on the floor while his opponent stood over him, looking as if they weren't event taking him seriously.

The only person he could really defeat was Cardin, and his fights were nothing but clean against him.

It was honestly just him copying Yun's dirty tricks. Seriously. That guy seriously telegraphed his attacks. There was nothing like Ruby's blistering speed or Blake's stealth, Pyrrha's… pure skill, and Ren's unpredictability.

It was just fighting against brute strength.

In every fight, Jaune would just let the hefty smashes of the mace pass him and trip him with just a slight nudge of the foot. It probably pissed Cardin off to no end. Maybe that was why he was bullying him.

In the wake of his failures, Jaune trained on the rooftops, trying to work on those techniques that Yun described to be elegant and smooth, designed to dissipate force with every parry. Despite Yun being able to pull off the techniques flawlessly against him during training, when he used it… it just didn't really cut it. He still just put too much effort into each blow, fully committing and probably violating the very core of the style every time he used it.

Now, against the bear, he forgot all about the style. It was just his sword, scabbard, and almost depleted aura against the bear. Half of his body littered with bites from the rapier wasps unleashed upon him, still slowly healing and degrading at the same time from the lingering venom, he threw away the scabbard he had clenched in his left hand and held the sword with both his hands.

The bear charged, and he charged forward as well, shouting a war cry to bolster his own courage. From the trees, his teammates watched as the two collided, ready to step in once things got bad.

Jaune motioned to jump into the air, and the Ursa took a hefty swipe at where it thought his head would be.

Instead, Jaune stabbed his sword in the ground and prevented himself from jumping, before sliding down under the still rushing bear and stabbing his sword in the bear's abdomen and sliding between the bear's legs to avoid being crushed by the grimm's falling corpse.

With grim satisfaction, Jaune picked up his sword after the bear collapsed and looked up into the sky.

It was a beautiful day today.

And at that moment, Jaune realized that he-

"Hey Jaune!" a voice shouted.

He was interrupted to see a black and white blur shoot past him.

Wait, was that Yun?

…

**(First person again)**

Wow. I did not expect to see Jaune in the forest. Was he on a field trip or something?

Anyways, I finally turned to face the attackers, now that I had an ally by my side.

"Got a bit of a situation here! These wolf things just decided to follow me since I entered the forest!" I said, punching a wolf in the face.

"God damn it, I was in the middle of an emotional epiphany!" Jaune yelled, gathering up the strength to strike at the flank of a wolf. His sword arced through the air and spilt black blood on the red forest. "What the hell did you do to attract this many?"

"I don't know!" I yelled, avoiding a bite, "But I've been chased by them for five days now!"

Random people flitted into action after that. A girl that looked familiar, with flowing scarlet hair and a gold-red sword flew into action, decapitating wolves by the bunch. A… cloud of rose petals(?) mysteriously flitted into the clearing in an organized fashion and obliterated a couple of dark creatures. Soon afterward, a gigantic fist of ice crushed another bunch.

It was a chaotic fight. My only real strategy was just punching the black blurs in front of my spotty vision and try not to pass out.

Apparently, fighting a crowd of grimm was much easier in a group. Soon, every single grimm in the area was evaporating into the wind.

"What in the world? That must have been about two hundred grimm!" somebody exclaimed.

I was in no condition to continue the conversation, as I had collapsed on the floor, finally succumbing to hunger and closing my eyes.

…

I woke up in a real bed.

For a while, I just contemplated that all the previous years of my existence as a coma-induced dream and that I was just waking up from receiving that hit to the head, but then I remembered that I could open my eyes and _see_ things.

Now my head in the right reality, I sat up and looked around. I was hooked up to an IV drip, probably to makes sure I don't die of starvation. The walls were porcelain white, with some flowers that probably symbolized death or something (Seriously. Why were they black? The village elders back home might have something to say about that.). The medical equipment felt pretty standard and smelled like rubbing alcohol. My clothes were slung over a back of a chair right next to my bed, with my fan on the desk and the medallion right beside it. The diary was on the chair and opened. Somebody probably had tried to read it.

This probably wasn't an actual hospital. The place was too clean for that.

But if I wasn't in a hospital, where was I?

…

Jaune was… arguably confused about the sudden appearance of Yun.

"Who was that?" Pyrrha asked him, outside the infirmary.

"Oh… Just an old friend." Jaune said, sighing. He sat down and leaned on the wall, wincing as a lingering injury from the rapier wasps sent a sting through his nerves. He held his sword in his hand and looked at what Yun described as "an impossibly white alloy of metal". "He taught me how to fight about a year ago."

"You were able to pass the Beacon combat tests with only a year of training?" Pyrrha said, mildly surprised.

"If you mean "beating the pulp out of me in a supposedly educational manner" when you say training, you're right." Jaune said, wincing. "But yeah, he helped me a lot. I basically annoyed him into helping me."

"Why was he even in the forest?" Pyrrha asked.

"I dunno." Jaune shrugged. "He said something about 'completing his training', all the while cursing badly cooked rice and a lack of apples."

"He sounds… unhinged." Pyrrha said, putting a hand on Jaune's shoulder. "Seriously, who trains somebody by beating them up?"

…

Across several universes, various protagonists sneezed as they were hit by wooden training swords.

…

"He said it was the only way he knew how to train anybody. He himself was trained the same way since he was five." Jaune said, shivering.

Pyrrha winced. "What was his name again?"

"Yun Wu." Jaune said as Pyrrha gasped in recognition. "What?"

"Yun Wu was the person who beat me two years ago in the Mistral Regionals!" Pyrrha exclaimed. "Why in the world is he in Vale?"

"Wait, Yun beat you?" Jaune said, surprised. "Well, he did mention some sort of fighting tournament with a bunch of insane people shooting him. Said it was unfair how everybody had their aura and he didn't."

"What? He fought in the tournament _without his aura unlocked?_ "Pyrrha exclaimed, thinking about all the times she almost stabbed him.

"Be quiet out there!" Yun said from within the room. "Some people are trying to recover from five days of starvation!"

"He did also run all the way from Vale to Beacon in five days without eating, though." Jaune said, shrugging. "And after being through all that crap in his life, I don't think being shot at without aura's the worst that has happened to him."

Pyrrha worked out the logistics of running from Vale to Beacon in five days in her head, and gave up comprehending Yun at all. That boy clearly was a bundle of insanity nobody could hope to comprehend.

" _I mean, seriously! Who in the world volunteers to get shot at without aura and_ _ **survives**_ _?"_

**AN: And… Scene!**

**That's the first chapter of Act 3 done! And in a week too! I didn't think I would make it, with life saying "Nope" every time I wanted to sit down and spam words onto a computer.**

**Anyways, please favorite, follow, and criticize me on the characterization of Pyrrha, Jaune, and the clichés I forced on the plot (Also called reviewing).**

**...**

**...**

**...**

**If you decided to skip Act 1 and 2, here's a brief summary of what happened.**

**A1C1:**

**Yun: (Gets murdered and wakes up)Oh look, I've been reincarnated.**

**Xin: (Badassery)**

**Yun: (In a basket on Xin's back) My life is suffering.**

**A1C2:**

**Yun: Language is hard. Why u no speak Chinese even if you have Chinese name?**

**Xin: wut**

**A1C3: (Xin's edgy backstory is revealed pt 1)**

**Gigantic devil bird: I exist**

**Yun: Oh crap I have to learn kung fu for some reason**

**Yun: (Unlocks his life force as an energy he can utilize)**

**Xin: wut**

**A1C4: (Yun's ed** **gy backstory is revealed)**

**Yun: I want learn fight**

**Xin: Ok. Learn by getting beat up by me.**

**Yun: My life is suffering. (Buddhism intensifies)**

**A1C5:**

**Raven: ThIs kId lOokS wEiRd. Let's fight him randomly for fun.**

**Yun: (Hits Raven once)**

**Raven: Haha aura is op gm go brrrrrrrrr**

**Raven: (Freezes Yun's face)**

**...**

**Yun: (Gets out of bandit camp and flops like a fish)**

**Raven: (Misses most sword strikes)**

**A1C6**

**Raven: Ur annoying**

**Yun: (Steals her katana) Yes I am.**

**Grimm: I take offence to that.**

**Yun: Oh crap.**

**(Cues chase scene)**

**A1C7: (More edgy backstory where Yun is bind and everything)**

**SpiritOfErebus: Introduces canon character and then takes it away so people don't get bored**

**Pyrrha: This kid is weird.**

**Yun: Yes I am.**

**Xin: I don't know what's normal anymore. Anyways good job on beating scary bird lady. Make ur weapon now.**

**Yun: Yay.**

**A1C8**

**SpiritOfErebus: Emotional goodbye scene**

**Reader: Skips or bails on fic**

**SpiritOfErebus: Noooooo**

**A2C1**

**Yun: I haz the hunger**

**Raven: Let's kill this annoying kid**

**Yun: (Grieviously injures himself but also temporarily distracts raven) Oh no I lost my food**

**A2C2**

**Yun: I enter death tournament now**

**Opponents: (incompetent noises)**

**A2C3**

**Pyrrha: Look ima wreck this kid that looks like insane kid I met back when I was smol**

**Yun: (Fight pyrrha without any metal gear)**

**Yun: (Wins)**

**Everybody else: (Existential crisis)**

**Readers: YuN iS tOo Op (complains about Yun "beating" Raven and pyrrha)**

**SpiritOfErebus: Yun literally got his butt kicked both times and escaped with the skin of his teeth while Raven suffered from exhaustion and tripping once**

**Readers: No this is naruto fanfic ur bad (Exits chat)**

**SpiritOfErebus: Noooooo**

**A2C4 (Xin's edgy backstory)**

**Yun: (Bypasses Atlas security and hitchhikes into dust transport container)**

**Atlas: Our security is impenetrable! Wait, who just stole all our food?**

**...**

**Blake: Pulls a Raven with Adam's brain cells and sanity (Aka runs away with it and wrecks everything)**

**Adam: My semblance is being the worst.**

**Yun: Understandable, have a great-**

**Adam: Lol nope ima end your whole career (sentds out laser beam wave that can anniliate robots)**

**Yun: Oh no, I've been impaled.**

**A2C5**

**Yun: I am Bear Grylls now. (Survives severe internal bleeding)**

**Jaune: I am a moody teenager with no desire other than joining death school. Train me.**

**Yun: no**

**Jaune: yes**

**Yun: no**

**Jaune: yes**

**Yun: no**

**Jaune: Okay you win, for now...**

**A2C6 (Xin's Edgy backstory)**

**Jaune: I challenge you!**

**Yun: Lol ok**

**Jaune: (Loses instantly)**

**Jaune: (Immobilized for an hour while Yun laughs at him)**

**Yun: Okay I train you now (Cues torturous training montage that I actually didn't write)**

**A2C7 (Yun in flashback: Being poor sucks)**

**Yun: Ima teach you how to use Chi**

**Jaune: (Somehow unlocks aura)**

**Yun has exited the chat**

**A2C8**

**Yun: Gets to vale**

**Readers: I'm bored**

**SpiritOfErebus: Ok fight scene**

**Yang: I have destroyed countless bars and men's ballsacks! I will not lose to a peasant like you!**

**Yang: (Fights Yun)**

**Yang: (Loses)**

**Yun: (Finally becomes a citizen of Vale)**


	18. A3 C2 No Longer at Ease

**AN: It has come to my attention that my grammar is, indeed, rather poor. If you all could potentially point out various mistakes in my writing, I would greatly appreciate it. Please sign in when criticizing so I can PM you a response.**

**Anyways, despite the rather self-depreciating foreword, enjoy the chapter!**

**-Spirit**

Excerpt #7: Xin's Old Memories: Past, Present, Future

On the airship back, Xin was not doing well. Recovering from near aura exhaustion and various other injuries was one thing. Recovering from the scars of his past were another.

He really hated illusions. Memories of the bloody temple welled up and refused to back down now, surging around in Xin's mind. The thoughts of blood, blood, torn throats, and more blood echoed. He was gripping his weapon with an iron fist, bones and joints standing out starkly against his slightly tanned skin.

His teammates noticed the oddly quiet behavior of the loudest member of their team, and decided not to speak. None of them knew what happened in the clearing, but one thing was for sure.

This was something Xin had to deal with by himself.

…

The roofs of Beacon were a magical place. The shattered moon illuminated the tiny, unfurnished surface of concrete almost perfectly, giving it the ethereal illusion of being covered in snow.

Xin sat there, looking at the tip of his staff, the same staff that took the lives of his fellow disciples of the temple.

Many questions were boiling in his mindscape. Namely, why the cult of the grimm had begun in the first place. And the question of his own morality.

If he had just left instead of reporting the cult to the head priest, could this have been prevented? Probably not.

Did he have to kill them?

_Did he? Did he?_

That was the way the monastery had taught them. To only incapacitate. Still, more advanced practitioners of the art of the pacifist style had fallen to the cultists. Perhaps this really was the only path.

But, when stopping the cultists, did he really become somebody willing to use lethal force to achieve his goals? Xin had defeated the enemy, but during the process, he had become the enemy.

For a moment, Xin saw a bloodstained battlefield illuminated by the broken moon instead of the cityscape, and cried.

He yelled at the heavens, but nobody answered.

…

…

I was finally allowed out of the infirmary after a couple of days.

It wasn't that bad in there, but it _was_ really boring. I reread the old diary as I waited for time to pass by and for the IV drip to finish. The black flowers wilted and were replaced… with more black flowers. Various staff members came in to clean the floors and the shelves, while I could hear many people being denied access from my room because "I needed rest".

It was true. After the extended adrenaline rush was over, I really didn't want to do anything but sleep. Still, there was a limit to how much a man could sleep in one day, and fifteen hours was really pushing it.

Now, stretching and finally being released from the confines of my prison, I was ushered up to meet the headmaster, Ozpin.

Soon, my training was to be complete!

Stepping out of the elevator and spotting the man, I saw… a rather fit old man sitting in a comfortable armchair with a hologram in front of him. Wearing an unbuttoned black suit and equally dark slacks, he also wore a green silk shirt and scarf. A cane leaned on the chair, but judging by the many tiny scratch marks on the tool, I could tell that it was used as a weapon. He wore odd spectacles and was currently holding a white coffee mug as he looked at me impassively.

"Yun Wu." He said. "This isn't the first time we've met."

"Yeah." I said, "I remember you talking to Xin as you boarded some sort of airship after Xin jumped off a cliff."

"You remembered? You were no more but an infant. How… odd." Ozpin said, eyes twinkling.

"Anyways, Xin sent me here to complete my training. How am I going to do that?" I asked, eagerly. "Is there some sort of training regimen I have to follow? Meditation? Trials of wit and strength?"

"Not… exactly." Ozpin said, putting down his mug and adjusting his spectacles. "I was thinking of making you a student here."

"A student… here?" I said, horrified. "How am I going to pay for going here?"

"Don't worry." Ozpin said, smiling enigmatically. "Your stay here will be free."

Yun was silent. For a moment, it seemed as if he were shocked by the statement. His eyes were as wide as saucers and his jaw was unnaturally wide open.

"N-no test? No awkward competition for scholarships? No grades assessment?"

Ozpin nodded mutely.

I sighed in relief, and began to imagine what the library in this behemoth of a school was going to look like.

…

It was pure bliss to sit in the sun with some food and read a book.

It was even better to know that from now on, I didn't need to work to support himself. I could finally put my guard down, relax, not train or train other people, not run from people with red katanas, and avoid getting shot at in death tournaments.

Now that I really think about it, my life has been pretty high-stress recently.

Dealing with annoying customers, grimm, his boss, paychecks, the quarterly taxes (apparently the tax rate for living in the city was about two times higher than it was back in his old world due to the protections the city offered from the grimm), and having to pay for things really took a toll out of me.

" _Maybe,"_ I thought, " _I can finally try to be a normal teenager for a while."_

I absentmindedly reached into the bag of cookies that I had besides me, before realizing that it wasn't there.

What?

I stood up and looked around me. There was nothing out of place. My shoddy robes (which looked more like a quilt with all of the clashing colors of different shades of black thread) were hanging on a high branch to dry. My book's pages were being held down by a stray rock, a couple of loose ends still fluttering defiantly in the wind. The grass where I was just sitting was curled down into what looked like a crude welcome mat, and the sun was shining into the Beacon gardens as usual.

The disappearances of the cookies seemed odd… until I noticed a rose petal blowing in the wind.

That was odd. Roses probably didn't grow here. If they did, I would have noticed. Beacon's gardens weren't real gardens, just groves of trees and natural grass that surrounded the courtyard. A statue depicting two figures posing heroically above a beowolf carved in black stone.

Channeling a bit of Chi, I focused on my surroundings. I heard the signature crumble of the treats somewhere away from the grove.

Interesting.

I picked up my book and folded a corner of it to keep the page I was on, before walking through the forest towards the noise. The concentration of rose petals grew and grew until they converged onto one person, sitting near the forest and inhaling the cookies.

The little girl looked very much like an emo.

First of all, she was wearing a red cape and all black clothes. Secondly, the tips of her short bob cut hair were red. And lastly, she just stole my cookies.

Not wanting to bother someone (those cookies _had_ been free for me, after all), I just walked away. Besides, with all of the trashy novels I had listened to after I ran out of classics on my mp3 player, high school drama was probably the most irritating thing in existence. I had been _living in one_ , being blind and having a cliché moment with my dormmates soon after, but I didn't want to be another one.

I revised my earlier statement. Maybe I could be a normal teenager without high school drama.

…

Jaune was… very confused about something.

How did somebody recover from severe acute malnutrition in two days? Yun was certainly an odd one.

And here he was, on his daily visit to the infirmary to check on him. All he saw was just an open door, and a janitor mopping up the place.

"Hey… sir? Can I ask about what happened here?" Jaune said tentatively.

"Patient moved out." The janitor grunted, furiously cleaning a particularly dirty patch of floor. "Then an intern messed up while moving out the IV drip and it spilt. Sugar water's nasty to clean up, I can guarantee you that, youngster."

"Okay. Thanks!" Jaune said, before turning around and sighing.

Today was a Saturday, and Jaune honestly didn't know what else to do.

Cardin had finally gotten off his back, and the two sort of had a non-verbal agreement to never speak to each other again. The forever fall incident really had changed things. And Jaune had finally understood what Yun was actually trying to teach him by beating him up.

It wasn't about memorizing moves, weaknesses, and advantages. It was coming up with your own style. Of course, one could still learn from others (Case in point, Yun's joint dislocating techniques), but you really had to come up with your own way of doing things.

Otherwise, you'll just end up as a pale imitation of the original, weaker and worse.

" _Yun,"_ Jaune thought, " _Truly was a genius."._

To think that this oddly philosophical lesson had been imparted on him by a person younger than him….

It filled him with a sense of awe.

…

I wasn't exactly being very intelligent here.

"So… uh… how exactly does this work?" I mused.

I was looking down at a pile of gems. They were in some sort of laboratory, and they were labeled "Dust", of all things.

I really should have looked more into chemistry when I was at the Vale Library. I was so frustrated about being so _close_ to beacon when I was in the red forest Forever Fall that I probably forgot about research afterwards.

I poked the crystals and they glowed ominously.

I prodded a blue one again. It felt… oddly cold?

I remembered the blue flash of a katana, before an empty freezing cold as I fainted. I instantly recoiled and ran out of the lab like a startled animal.

" _I have no choice but to acknowledge these people as the superior beings."_ I thought. " _They found a way to turn ice into an elemental crystal that activates based on will."_

…

Soon, the clock hit twelve and I followed the herd of students to the cafeteria. I wasn't really out of place, given that everybody was in their casual assembly.

I had checked out the little closet they had given me (The normal rooms were meant for four people), and it was basically the best Janitor's closet in the school that was in the dorms wing. It had a nice view over the gardens and had a desk, lamp, and bed crammed in there. There was also a tiny bathroom that looked unused, which was good.

I had taken down the sign that said "Janitor's closet" in front of it, and put the bag of stuff they gave me onto the bed. Inside was a rather snazzy uniform, toiletries, an actually functional scroll (that came with instructions!) and various toiletries and clothes from the lost and found.

It was a great place, given that my old house in the farm was falling apart and rotting while I couldn't even see my old room back home.

Anyways, back to the holy structure known as a cafeteria.

_What in the world is up with this place?_

With swordfish, whole hams, and various other ridiculously outlandish foods on the table, I was glad that this wasn't coming out of my paycheck. Judging by the appetites of the students, the veritable feast was probably warranted. Maybe being mystical warriors wielding their own souls as weapons against the forces of darkness and evil took more out of them than I thought.

Taking a platter and cutting off a slab of swordfish with a saw, then putting some steamed rice and steak bits onto my platter, I was a happy man in this insane world.

At least I had food.

Seeing a student with familiar mop of blonde hair and nervous attitude, I walked over to their table and sat down at the far end, before consuming the food ravenously.

For a moment, Jaune just sat there, staring at his beans. And then he realized.

"Yun!" He said loudly, though not on the level of a shout. He scooted over and sat next to me, forgetting his food on the other side of the table.

"Hey there, Jaune." I said, briefly ceasing my attack on the mountain of rice on my plate. "How's this place treating you?"

"Beacon's great! I never could have gotten in without your training on the combat tests." Jaune said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "How about you? Recovering from all of those wounds yet?"

"It was more like starvation, but I'm up and about now." I said, shrugging, before returning to my food.

Another student came to sit down. This guy wearing green robes with yellow accentuations and white pants that sat down next to Jaune quietly, sipping what looked like a cup of tea.

"Where'd you get the-" I began, but-

_**Slam!** _

A stack of pancakes on a plate was put on the table rather forcefully, making me wince. That must have left indentations on the wood.

"Ooh…" The person carrying the plate said, sitting down behind the rather ridiculous amount of pancakes and looking at me with interest. It was another girl, with turquoise eyes and orange hair, wearing pink fingerless gloves.

The color clash was horrible.

"Who are you?" They asked bluntly, still staring at me with interest. "Fearless leader hasn't mentioned any other friends in Beacon."

I leaned back away from her, before whispering to Jaune. "Is this normal?"

"Yeah, pretty much." He said, before clearing his throat and introducing me.

"Nora, this is Yun. Yun, Nora."

"Nice ta meetcha!" The girl shouted exuberantly, grabbing my arm and shaking it. My elbows were slammed onto the poor wooden table and I could feel my tendons being pulled. Judging by the pitying looks the other tables were giving me, I knew I was probably going to be harmed somehow.

"Yun is the guy who taught me how to fight." Jaune said cheerfully. "Without him, I would never have passed the combat trials."

"You give me too much credit." I said, peeling my hand away from the iron grip Nora had. "I really just beat you up until you learned how to dodge things. Who's the other guy?"

"That-s"

"That's Ren! My total bestie!" Nora said, still excited. "We've been together since we were children -not together, together- and-"

This went on for a while, during which the newly identified Ren sighed and resumed drinking tea.

"Is she just basically a cup of coffee personified?" I asked Jaune.

"-and we've been to this really cool diner together that served pancakes-"

"Basically." Jaune said, sighing. "Don't remind me about that time when she drank coffee though."

"-we were kicked out because I used a tazer on myself and channeled my semblance but-"

I tuned the ramblings of the girl out and just concentrated on my food. After a minute, her speech died down and her attention turned to her food.

I never knew that human jaws could be that wide as about five pancakes were swallowed at once, before I stopped thinking about it to preserve my sanity.

"You!" A voice shouted.

I turned, and saw a girl with red hair and a golden circlet pointing at me, all the while carrying a salad in her tray.

"Excuse me?" I asked her, extremely confused. I hadn't irritated anybody severely yet.

"You are Yun Wu, correct?" she asked, sitting down next to Jaune.

"Yeah. How didja know?"

"Great." She said, smiling rather like a shark. "I challenge you to a fight.".

"Uh…." I stammered, sweating. "… May I ask why?"

"Don't you remember? You defeated me at the finals during the Mistral Regional Tournament two years ago!" She said indignantly, almost as if affronted because I didn't remember.

"W-What?" Another shrill voice shouted.

It belonged to one person in a group of another four girls. As I was wondering about the gender ratio in this school for hunters, I absentmindedly replied.

"Well, maybe. I've just been in too many fights to count. Yours just… doesn't stick out." I said, "I've been almost skewered multiple times by people wearing weird red and white masks and using katanas, ran in a forest for five days to escape a never ending horde of grimm, probably fought in that tournament, and been beaten up countless times by my mentor.".

The table was silent.

"… What even is your life?" A blonde girl said, looking sort of horrified.

"I know, right?" I said, looking at her.

"Oh wait, it's you!" She shouted. The rest of the table also looked supremely confused by the declaration.

I sighed and placed my face in my hands. I was done with people recognizing me out of the blue.

"What is it with this school? First my cookies get stolen, then my hand almost gets crushed, and then three total strangers recognize me at once."

I sighed, before picking up my chopsticks and skewering a piece of steak rather aggressively with it.

"I'm starting to regret my decision to stay in this school, even if it was free for me."

**Omake: Semblance Shenanigans (What's this? An omake? From Chasing Light? Impossible!)**

**Booting up Alternate Universes….**

**Insufficient memes to access full catalog.**

**Choose scenario (sample):**

**-D &D Reference**

**-Terrible Karma**

**-Henry Stickman Collection Reference**

**-Fate/Stay Night Reference**

**Chosen: DnD Reference**

**Playing tape….**

Pyrrha swung her sword viciously at me, and I jumped into the air to dodge.

Apparently, the girl had a massive competitive streak. I didn't think that beating her in that competition would really make things that bad, but apparently it did.

" _Oh, god."_ I thought. " _There's no way I'm surviving this."_

The problem with the situation was how small the fighting platform was. A mere fifteen meters in diameter, the circle didn't really allow for that many evasive maneuvers. She had learnt from her lesson last time and was peppering me with bullets as my newly activated Aura was tanking the hits, silver flare almost constant around the body.

In the middle of a jump, I swung my fan at a bullet aimed straight for my face, and time froze.

We all looked around, confused, before I noticed the numbers above my head.

It was apparently flickering from numbers one to twenty, as the yellow characters flashed through the sequence over and over again.

It rested on a 1.

" _Roll for parry: critical failure."_ An announcer said.

Time resumed. I accidentally lost my grip on my fan and it was flung outward. The bullet hit me straight in the eye and my aura flared, trying to heal my bloody face. The fan hit the fluorescent lights above and somehow caused systematic destruction right over my head.

Everybody winced as the electricity arced through my body from the lightning dust fueling the lamps. The concrete stage then crumbled, burying me under a ton of rubble. I twitched before lying still.

…

"What… was that?" Pyrrha said, extremely confused.

"Probably a semblance." Somebody said.

Professor Goodwitch had to reconstruct the combat arena several more times that year.

**Chosen: Henry Stickman Collection Reference**

**Playing tape…**

The gauntlet strike from Yang was coming, and I was completely out of it.

Through pure hair-vandalizing fury, the fire tornado known as Yang Xiao Long had begun pummeling me across the combat arena. Concrete was turned into powder and the foundations of the school were shaken when I cut of a lock of her hair with a stray kunai knife.

Then, time froze in a very similar fashion in another alternate universe.

Six hovering items appeared before me, and I looked at them. What looked like a controller with three green buttons and one red round button in the middle stood out to me (I mean, who would choose a barrel or the cheese to escape this terrible situation?).

I reached out for the device and read the instructions.

"Just press the buttons and go wherever you want to go." The paper read enticingly.

What could possibly go wrong? It was even rated five stars on Gadget Gabe, whatever that was.

I pressed two of the green buttons before pressing the center button. In a nauseating series of motions, I was stretched, squashed, and everything went black.

…

Let it be known that Beacon had a very prominent spike right on the top of the tower.

And Professor Goodwitch was going to have a field day trying to get me off of it without destroying Ozpin's office or ripping my entrails out.

I lay on the roof, bleeding out, as the word "Fail" appeared in front of me in big red font.

**Chosen: Terrible Karma**

**Playing Tape…**

I approached the bunch of crystals with caution, and a certain white-haired heiress was not impressed. Tapping her feet impatiently, she watched as I prodded a fire dust crystal gently with a poker.

"It's really not that hard to work with dust." Weiss huffed, a haughty look on her face. "As the heiress of the SDC, I have complete mastery over my family's product, and I will be more than able to guide you through the dangerous arts of dust chemistry."

As if to make a point, she reached out and grabbed a fire dust crystal.

"It's not going to instantly kill you if you touch it, you dolt!" She said condescendingly.

And then it exploded.

My world went white, and my ears began ringing.

The dust lab was completely destroyed. The windows were shattered and patches of what looked like electrified ice was frozen across the table.

Weiss got up shakily, brushing off soot from her "combat skirt".

"A-are you alright?" She coughed, assessing the ruined scene in front of her.

I opened my mouth to speak, but then _it_ happened.

Why does it always involve floating boxes when it comes to my semblances across alternate universes?

Fourth wall aside, I was really freaking out.

There were four options as to what I could possibly choose to say.

_**You look nice today!** _

_**I'm alright, but you're downright fine, baby~** _

_**[Redacted]** _

_**[Cut out because this story is rated T]** _

Sighing, I reached for my lab notebook and described the situation on paper.

If this was how my life was going to be from now on, I may as well learn sign language. My only question is, what kind of karma must I have amassed through my cycle of reincarnation to end up with having a Dating Sim Semblance?

**Chosen: Fate/Stay Night Reference**

**Playing Tape…**

It was a perfectly normal sparring session.

Perfectly normal, as in, me screaming in terror as Nora tried to pummel me like she does whack-a-mole machines.

Seriously. Arcade managers have nightmares about this girl.

On one particularly wide swing, I attempt to grab the shaft of the hammer to keep it immobilized for me to stop Nora's rampage and not turn into tenderized steak.

I failed to keep Nora's monstrous strength in check, but my mind was flooded with information… I didn't exactly need to know.

' _Magnihild.'_ My memory described. ' _The chosen weapon of Nora Valkyrie. Turns into grenade launcher. Made out of titanium alloy and syrup. Pixels on sprite sheet for Volume 1-3: (255, 255, 255), (255, 254, 255), (255,243,240)…'_

My memory droned on and on, about people named Monty Oum or Miles Luna, about each individual pixel of Magnihild during the design stage, its revisions, its potential usages, its appearances on the RWBY reddit…

Needless to say, the fourth wall was shattered again and my brain was overloaded with RGB values as I was punted out of the building.

One thing was for sure. I was going to have to get a pair of gloves, and also be able to put them on without getting my mind filled with graphics data.

…

**AN: And that's a wrap to the longest omake ever! Almost a thousand words!**

**For the people who are wondering what in the world Yun's semblance will be. There might be a second part, but it depends on if you guys enjoy this kind of stuff or not.**

**Anyways, I really enjoyed writing this chapter, even if life is being kind of a rabid cur to me right now.  
**

**Please Follow, Favorite, and Review. It brightens my days to see people appreciating the two hours I put into this every week during these dark times.**


	19. A3 C3 The waves of whispers

**AN**

**Greetings, everybody!**

**Thanks for 100 favorites! This monumental day will go down in history.**

**Allow me to present this extremely late chapter! Enjoy!**

**-SpiritOfErebus**

Excerpt #10: New City, New Problems

I should have expected this.

I should have expected this a long time ago.

I was being written into a WeChat article. I couldn't actually use phones (the dastardly devices refused to reveal their secrets to me) but I could hear the people mumbling out the articles to themselves in the bus stations.

After I heard a description of me tripping everywhere, I really didn't want to go around anymore. It was honestly just too much attention. To be honest, I was used to being the center of attention. However, it usually was in a negative way. Contest managers found me excessively irritating, but I literally _couldn't_ cheat and showing my work was literally useless to me.

Now, being praised for my persistence in "pursuing my dreams" and "going into the big cities", I honestly just wanted to curl up in a corner and stay there with my bread and water. Now, I remembered why I wanted to avoid literally everybody and pretend I was normal back in high school.

To buy food, I literally had to memorize the amount of steps between each turn before I walked into the grocery store, the computerized jingle sounding. I stood there for a second, listening to the sound of people walking, before turning, going forward ten steps, and turning left. Then, I walked forward two steps, felt for the second tag on the right, and grabbed a package of… something.

It was soft, so I assumed it was bread.

I retraced my steps, arrived at the door again, before pivoting forty five degrees and going to pay for the food.

It was much more expensive than I anticipated. I held out the ten RMB note and two coins were dropped into my hand. The clerk grunted and shooed me away as I stood there, feeling the light weight of my change in confusion.

I opened the oddly plasticy package and took out…

Dish washing sponges.

Oh, right. It was eight steps to the food aisle, not ten.

I absentmindedly chewed on the sponge as I wallowed in my failure, before spitting it out, trying to cough the tiny bits of material out of my throat.

" _Why would a grocery store even sell dishwashing sponges?"_ I thought as I pocketed them anyways and walked back to the dorms.

…

…

The room they gave me didn't come with curtains. As a result, my room just got caught up in the full blast of the broken moon's light.

When I really think about it, this world doesn't make a lot of sense physics-wise. I could literally jump off a cliff and survive. There was a mystical force based on people's souls that could stop attacks and heal (which was definitely not Chi, the way other students were breathing was all wrong).

I sat up, throwing the covers off and turning on the lights. Trying to sleep was futile.

It was time to cram.

Whether I liked it or not, I was still a student in what was probably the most prestigious military academy in this world. And I was probably not qualified. I didn't have any official schooling, and Junior back from that seedy bar was very hasty in making my identification. He probably wanted me to get out of there but whatever.

Speaking of the bar…

"Ugh…" I groaned, putting down the book and cupping my face with both my hands.

Why was it that I somehow gained some sort of mysterious fame _again?_ Three people recognized me! Three complete strangers!

I would prefer that number to be zero, thank you very much.

That was probably more than the number of people I had held multiple conversations with (that extremely short list included Jaune and Xin).

Why did I think that trying to win that god forsaken death tournament would be a good idea? Even if the cash was very much necessary to make sure I didn't starve, was there really no other way for me to scrap together that much money? I could probably… deliver pizzas or something.

I went back to reading. Focusing on the mistakes of humanity in history was a lot easier than focusing on my own stupidity. At least one of them had an end to it and didn't bother me constantly.

Still… what exactly is a Faunus? Maybe the avid animal cosplayers I've been seeing around everywhere? It was kind of creepy, to be honest. Whole families wearing animal ear headbands. Some even sported tails. All of them were eerily lifelike.

Who was I kidding? The sheer impracticality in the biological fields of having a pair of ears in addition to having human ears is immeasurable. It was probably just the local culture and my paranoia just made me worry more.

What I really should be worrying about is tomorrow's school day.

…

Adjusting my tie uncomfortably, I fidgeted in the corner of a classroom. On the other side of the room, three people glared at me. There was Yang, the person that almost beat the crap out of me, another girl that looked like the incarnation of upper class haughtiness, and a girl with amber eyes and wearing a black bow. Still, the latter was not really glaring at me and was just casting furtive glances at me, as if verifying my identity.

I shouldn't have met anybody like that. I would have remembered the eyes.

Just then, the doors were shoved open and a green blur raced down the stairs, papers cascading off desks in his wake. Students, almost as if used to this, sighed and picked their notes back up.

Jaune filed in from the back of the class, gave a tiny wave, and sat in the row in front of me. Some other people gave me weird looks as they sat beside me, but I just scooted the fancy armchair I was sitting in slightly away from them.

The classroom was a strange place. It felt like a college lecture hall, with the blackboard in front and a vast atrium before it, designed to cram in as many students as possible. I had sat through and almost slept through many lectures in the same type of construct.

Still, it was a little too high class to really feel like a lecture hall. The seats were too soft, the desks were made of wood and not plastic, and the amount of decorations on the walls was not natural.

Seriously, was there a need to put coffee mugs in glass frames?

The teacher blurred into existence, almost scaring me half to death. He was standing beside the podium, wearing a stained white shirt and a yellow tie. It clashed horribly with his green hair.

"Hello there, class! Today we begin our pursuit of history once more! But first! We have a new student among us! … What was his name again?" The teacher said rapidly.

For a moment, we all just sat there and let the words sink in, processing the vast amount of words he just spewed at us in two seconds.

I'm pretty sure that it violated a couple of laws of physics, but who am I to say? I was an engineering student on a whole new world, not a physics researcher.

Oh yeah, the teacher said something about a new student.

I raised my hand, and said " That would be me, sir.".

The teacher instantly appeared before me. I almost fell out of my chair, backing away in fright. I managed to gather my wits and sit back normally, looking back into the teacher's foggy glasses.

"What was your name again?" he asked.

"Uh… Yun Wu, sir."

"My name is Doctor Oobleck. Make sure to call me doctor." He said, before vanishing and reappearing in the spot he was just standing in. Apparently the class was used to this type of behavior, because barely anybody even batted an eye about it.

"Now, let us resume our lesson. We left off last time at the Battle of Fort Castle, and now…"

The history lesson droned on, and my paper was almost smoking because of the speed I was writing. I lapsed into writing Chinese again and scribbled the key points on the paper. Other people gave me odd looks, but when the teacher paused to chug more of his coffee down, I realized I was the only one still taking notes. Other people, nursing sore wrists and chafed fingers, had long since ceased in their efforts.

Whatever. I need to catch up with literally everything anyways.

…

It was combat class. And I was kind of panicking.

Apparently this combat class involved not only learning how to fight, but also really fighting as well.

Which meant I was going to be put in a confined space with another person that probably possesses guns, since everything was a gun these days.

And I did not possess an aura, either. I was not looking forward to this. Additionally, my armored robes were basically in scraps right now, so one solid hit would do it in.

To make things even worse, I was challenged.

"Professor Goodwitch, I challenge Yun Wu." Pyrrha said, a look of determination on his face.

"Yun Wu? Where have I heard that name before?" Somebody muttered it.

"Probably in history class." Somebody else said.

"Wait, wasn't he the guy who won the Mistral Regionals two years ago?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Professor Goodwitch cleared her throat. Everybody quieted down, and occasionally a whimper of fear would be heard.

This was probably the typical "scarily strict teacher " archetype.

"Due to joining us late this year, he will be required to give a combat demonstration anyways to prove his own worth. Now, _do you accept?"_

The "no is not an answer" part remained unsaid.

I nodded, sweating slightly through my uniform.

"Good." She nodded, before waving her riding crop and telling me to go to the locker room.

And I left the room, going to the lockers that I had found before on the school tour. The room was cold and metallic, with grey colorings everywhere. Even the lockers were made of metal, the oddly coffin-like structures not doing good for my psyche. Out of habit, I still put on my tattered robes. The sleeves were frayed and patches stood out like sore thumbs amidst the black fabric. My trusty fan was retrieved from its pocket, and I sharpened two of the kunai hidden in the fan before tucking them back in. Putting off my formal uniform shoes and putting on a more comfortable pair of hiking boots, I was finished changing.

For a while, I paced nervously within the room, the dim lighting casting shadows all over the place. It was a particularly cloudy day outside, visible through the high windows near the ceiling of the unnecessarily tall room.

"Nervous, are we?" A voice said.

I jumped.

"It's not often that a person makes it into Beacon without their aura unlocked." The voice said again.

I turned around. In his usual outfit, Ozpin sat on one of the seats, looking vaguely amused at my panicking.

"When did you get here?" I shouted, my nerves finally giving up on the concept of courage.

"Just about a minute ago."

"You can't just walk into a changing room!"

"Those are mere trivial factors. Now…" Ozpin stood up and walked over to me, his cane making dull _thunks_ on the grey stone floor.

"Would you like your aura unlocked?"

"… Sure? I mean, at this point, I'll take what I can get."

"Then hold out your hand, and close your eyes."

I did so, and waited for whatever weird ritual that would soon follow. Instead, he just grabbed my wrist and began muttering. Something about immortality and suffering.

And then I felt it. It was like my soul was singing, finally being unleashed. My Chi boiled in agitation, clearly not used to the external energy. I opened my eyes, and saw waves of black ripple across my body, like waves blown by an ethereal wind.

It honestly felt kind of weird.

"Best of luck now." Ozpin said, letting go of my wrist and turning, leaving through some arcane means.

For a moment, I just stood there, processing what just happened. Then, I held up my wrist and inspected it, the black energy (though it looked more like a dark shade of violet now) still rippling across it.

Then I rubbed my eyes, and looked again.

It was still there.

"Did I just join a cult?"

…

The walk to the combat arena was strangely nostalgic. It looked like a miniature coliseums, similar to the one in Mistral. The people muttered, as if actually looking forward to it.

After the waves of dark violet energy had finally ceased, I was ready to walk out into the light. My opponent had not yet arrived, so I just stood there, thinking about sword forms and potential evasion tactics.

Sword forms? Yeah, I couldn't remember any. I didn't have a sword, either, and I was unfamiliar with what was my opponent's style.

Then Pyrrha Nikos, the former champion herself, emerged.

Wearing basically the same getup but adjusted for size, we were basically reliving the match from about fourteen months ago.

"Again, this is a sparring match. Both of you will stop when your aura reaches the red."

Pyrrha was about to ask Professor Goodwitch something, but I stopped her.

" _I have aura now"_ I mouthed at her, as discretely as I could. She nodded imperceptibly and grinned a bit. I wanted to scream and run away, but to not get kicked out of the school, I had to at least put up a good fight.

"And-"

Both of us tensed, prepared to move. Pyrrha bought her sword up and bought her shield to her torso. I got in a basic martial art stance and held my weaponized fan behind me.

"-Begin!"

Pyrrha rocketed towards me, sword swinging in a wide arc. I dodged, leaning backwards and avoiding the blow, before doing a backflip and observing her warily. She pressed some button on her weapon and began unloading a clip of bullets at me.

Crap.

I just ran around the arena's borders, wincing as the bullets flew near me. She clearly had a strategy in mind: keep shooting at me until I give up. The hail of bullets stopped, and I immediately seized the chance and flung my kunai knives at her. The audience gasped as Pyrrha had to drop her magazine and hold out her shield as the knives bounced off of the barrier and clattered to the ground. Undeterred, I leaped towards her as she readied her sword again, not willing to pick up the fallen magazine.

I dropped to the ground when she raised her sword in the air to potentially deflect a drop kick and tried to sweep her legs instead. She jumped over the blow, reflexively transformed her sword into a spear, and stabbed down right at my face.

Channeling my Chi and creating a vacuum-like state between my palm and the smooth floor, I pivoted from the point I was stuck to the ground from and avoided the blow, and then grabbed the spear with my other hand before making my hand stop sticking. It really sucked (heh) to do things like manipulate air pressure in a certain region because it was very hard on the skin there, but it was better than losing half my face.

Throwing the spear out of the arena, I had effectively disarmed her. Still, she tried to bash my face in with the edge of her shield, clearly not giving up. I held up my hands above my face and stopped the shield, my elbows still pained by hitting the ground suddenly. I pushed off the shield and slid out from my position of lying on the ground and picked up my fan, still crouched defensively.

Somehow, she was still smiling, though it looked kind of strained.

Both of us circled each other, waiting for each other to make the first move.

Then I noticed the fallen magazine of bullets. I approached it slowly and kicked it at her.

Briefly losing concentration, she held up her shield to block the projectile, only for me to rush right in front of her and kick her shield. Not braced for the sudden impact, she fell on her back, her shield rolling away.

I kicked that out of the arena too, all the while keeping an eye of her slowly rising form.

Now, she was totally disarmed while I still had my fan, though I did run out of kunai knives.

The exchange took about forty seconds, but the course of the fight had already been decided.

"I surrender." Pyrrha said to Professor Goodwitch.

I sighed and scurried out of the combat arena, avoiding the hushed whispers that followed the proclamation.

…

I really hated crowds. Now, more so than ever.

Other students pointed and whispered, making me contemplate locking myself in my glorified janitor's closet and locking the door shut.

It turns out that I was the only student that had ever beaten Pyrrha Nikos in a sparring match.

Heading to the cafeteria, I sighed. It seemed as if I could never avoid attention wherever I went…

…

**Finally! I got that combat scene out of the way. If anybody thinks it's really awkward or just, you know, impossible for Pyrrha to lose to Yun, keep in mind that**

**#1: Yun doesn't have anything on him that's metal**

**#2: Pyrrha is training to be a huntress, not an assassin (Or: I think Pyrrha isn't training to specifically fight people, just to fight efficiently), while Yun has begun his training since he was five to specifically fight people.**

**And… that's basically my argument.**

**Expect infrequent updates because of life and chapters that aren't as long as the old chapters. I can only spam that many words onto a computer during these two hours and I don't even have time to edit.**

**That being said, if you spot grammar mistakes please PM them to me so the review section can actually be for reviews.**

**Please follow, favorite, and review!**

**-Spirit**


	20. A3 C4 Blood and Iron

**This is probably the longest I've gone without an update.**

**Anyways, here you go! A chapter! Enjoy!**

**BTW this is a repost because people might not have actually been able to read this chapter because of being weird.**

**-Spirit**

Excerpt 8: Xin's Memory Logs: Picking up the Pieces

Sometimes, people just had to move on.

There was no point in dwelling in the past, thinking about the blood on my hands.

Still, there wasn't much to move onto, to be honest. Other than the terrible atrocities that happened across remnant, life was dull and boring, with lectures and a side dish of homework being the general course of life. At this point, other humans were just reminders of the very thing I had to move on from.

I considered getting a therapist, but it was honestly really expensive because of the amount of PTSD in this world. The online appointments were booked full.

It made sense, given how the world really was falling apart at the seams while people just pretended that everything was fine, while the fire raged around them and their houses collapsed.

Luckily, I was introduced to something amazing via ads on an encyclopedia: Video Games.

Such intricate programming and organization provided a virtual environment to escape from my troubles temporarily, to be able to gun down people without any regret. It was fun claiming the wins in the games, as the players were almost all civilians and didn't have battle-honed reflexes forged from monster fight to monster fight.

I stayed away from the medieval fantasy genre though. Too much of it was so similar to the temple.

After a week of playing the game, I used my share the money we were paid from the mission to buy a new scroll.

Still, something seems off about this one game… Something about being a security guard…

Might as well try it.

…

…

"… And that concludes today's lesson. Remember the five hundred word essay on the long term effect of war on small villages and complete the readings for chapter twelve."

I sighed, and waved my paper in the air a bit, cause I had the odd feeling that it was actually smoking because of the illegible chicken scratch I had been branding onto the paper. I sighed, stuffed the notes in my folder, before fast-walking out of the room.

The day's lessons were now over. Even if there was a lot of homework, I could probably do it blindfolded. College lessons were much more intense.

I quickly made it to the bullhead station, which was really the equivalent of a small airplane back on earth. Not that I had ever been on one, mind you, but those engines were frightfully loud when they passed over the city landscape.

I guess my life was a little too exiting, because right now, everything just seemed… really bland. At least college back in my old life came with the challenge of being blind. Now it was just a really fast lecture.

Absentmindedly fanning myself, the last bits of summer's heat still making the uniform I was wearing a little stuffy, I noticed that my fan really was falling apart. The stitched carbon fiber was all frayed, and the spines of the fan were minutely bent, making odd clacking noises every time I waved it in the air.

It was time for a tune up.

And then the idea hit me.

I didn't need to _wait_ for something exiting to happen. I could make something exiting happen by literally making something.

I ran back to my room and began cannibalizing my notes to make blueprints of potential weapons.

…

Designing an electromagnetic generator was harder than I thought. I really did think that I had the structure memorized, but having a structure memorized when you were blind did not equate being able to build it fifteen years later.

I had petitioned to take a week off for "personal reasons", which the school accepted, seeing as my grades so far were just a little less than perfect(I was still kind of butchering history essays and making them sound like communist propaganda).

Anyways, back to designing the generator. I was in the middle of trying to design a gun-sword hybrid when I hopped onto the internet and found out that there were no generators in this world and everything was running on _lightning dust,_ of all things. Even if it was low quality and not "combat grade" (whatever that meant for dust), it still said one thing about this world: Its technology was not as advanced as I thought it was.

The basic principle of the generator was simple. Because I couldn't exactly buy coal or gasoline, I had to create an electromagnetic coil that would spins a metal rod around and use the motion to generate electricity. The rod would then be connected to a magnet that would be situated in the middle of a copper tube to create charge difference and "funnel" the electrons away.

Or so I thought. I was no chemistry expert.

...

At lunch tomorrow, switching between eating and scribbling, I continued my thoughts on the generator. It really was going nowhere. I had researched enough to begin envisioning how to generate electricity from movement. It really involved more magnets and a spinning metal rod.

I really was about to give up. A generator wasn't something that a first year college student could recreate.

"Whatcha designing?" a voice asked.

It was the girl that always wore a red hood with her uniform. Her name was…. something that had to do with red. I don't remember.

"A generator." I mumbled, switching my attention to the sandwich on my plate briefly.

"Why would you need a generator? A generator for what?"

"Don't worry about it. It's just… something I thought about a while back." I said, flipping to a couple of scrapped gun sword designs that had actually made it past the original thinning until I thought about the damages that the servos would sustain in prolonged combat.

"Ooh!" she squealed, "Are these weapon designs? Can I see? Can I see?"

The sheer _exhilaration_ in that voice made me pause for a bit and contemplated my life choices. After a moment of deliberation, I slid the notebook over to her and took a swig of whatever I got. It turned out to be sparkling water, and the rather unique taste gave me a bit of a shock.

"Why'd you scrap these designs? They were perfectly fine."

"Wait, Yun's designing another weapon?" Jaune said, leaning over from across the table to look. "Why does that one look like Crocea Mors?"

"I… may or may not have taken inspiration from your weapon." I admitted, taking back my notebook and shutting it.

After all, I haven't really seen a professional grade straight sword. I was going off of the description in novels at this point.

"I'm considering not adding additional forms to it at all. I don't have the budget to continue maintenance on all of the eventually busted servos and internal mechanisms."

"Doesn't Beacon offer free access to their work areas?"

"They do, but you still have to buy technical equipment like servos yourselves."

"Oh." She said, blinking in bewilderment. "I just bought my parts cause I like 'em."

"…Okay."

"Anyways, I thought you already had a weapon." Jaune said. "Why are you making a new one?"

"If you really look at it, this fan's seen better days." I said, getting the broken weapon out of my pocket and showing it to her.

"Why don't you just hammer them back into shape? Should be simple enough." She said, staring at it with interest.

"That's because I actually can't. It's not made of metal." I sighed, putting it back into my pocket. "It's made out of carbon fiber. I can't get any more of it, so I'm going to have to make a completely new one. At this point, I'm contemplating just getting a sword and leaving it at that."

…

Making a sword was not easy, either. It was obvious not to make a sword out of pure iron, so I just sat in the forges for about an hour, thinking about how I was going to turn a blob of molten iron into something even remotely shaped like a sword

I searched up an instructional video, and found out that swords were actually made using molds, and the edge was hammered out by heating up part of the sword and going from there.

I was going to need to make a mold first, which involved creating a model sword.

Thankfully, Beacon provided wood just for this purpose. I took a carving knife and carved out an exceedingly thin wooden sword, which immediately broke in half the second I took it to the clay.

I face palmed. This really was going to be harder than I thought.

I tried again, this time making a wooden sword with a thicker blade but with a smaller width. I planned on hammering it out to be the shape I wanted afterwards.

It did work, but it was terribly uneven. I used Chi to smooth out some of it to get rid of some of the more jagged edges (This application was actually one of the exercises to practice Chi control), and decided it was the best I could do.

I coated the blade with a copious amount of clay before discovering that a mold was actually wasn't something that was coated around the model. It was what the model was placed in.

That was a lot of wasted clay. At least Beacon was paying for it.

I tried again, this time pressing the blade down into a wooden box filled with clay, before extracting it. Before doing so, I had carved out a smooth handle so that I could make the grip separately.

After double checking what I had done again, I added some random bits of wood, in hopes that it would fool my Chi into considering the steel as a dead plant (like my fan was) and not just plain steel. Chi and steel… didn't really go together, and applying Chi on steel made small rods of it basically snap in half and just refused to function on large blocks of it.

Apparently forging was just a lot of waiting. The steel hadn't even started to liquefy yet, so I decided to work on an armored glove design while waiting. If I really was going to try and grab other people's blades in fights, I might as well do it with an armored hand.

…

Twenty minutes later, during which two scrapped designs found themselves in the furnace fire, I took the pot of melted steel mixed with particles of burnt ash and poured it into the mold.

Then, guess what I had to do?

Wait more. Apparently putting the mold into a cooling apparatus was a terrible idea because the steel would crack if it were cooled too rapidly.

According to the internet, steel took about thirty minutes to cool down to a level where It remained solid yet semi-malleable, so I did just that and continued to work on my armored glove design, which now involved somehow attaching chainmail parts to a normal leather glove. I didn't have either of those things so getting that was going to take a while.

Speaking of which, how much does chainmail cost? If people sold weapon parts, then why not chainmail?

I decided to look that up as well.

…

The steel had mostly solidified, and I decided to try and get it out of the mold. Putting on half-burnt cloth mitts, I grabbed the handle of the semi-solidified steel and pulled it out of the mold. It actually vaguely looked like a sword, but the surface was basically grey, nothing like what I expected a sword to look like.

I decided to just hammer a blade onto it and see what happens then. Starting a fire under the anvil (the burner didn't use fuel but fire dust crystals, something I found very interesting), I heated up the sword's blade again and finally hefted the hammer, ready to make this sword.

I smiled. After all of the trials and tribulations of not following instructions correctly, I had finally succeeded for once.

I wasn't even going to use my whole week to create my weapon!

…

Hammering this thing was… extremely slow.

The metal only bent minutely every time the hammer struck steel, and after about five sure strikes one would have to reheat the sword to get the edges to be malleable again. The sword maintained its ugly black color throughout the beating, only showing a bit of silvery sheen on the blade areas.

Having an engineering degree does not mean you can make a sword. Good to know.

I was definitely putting off creating a generator until I actually understood blacksmithing. That generator is going to take an ungodly amount of custom parts to create. Meanwhile, from trying to sharpen a steel bar, my hands were blistered and I honestly felt terrible.

I now understood why blacksmithing was an actual trade, and not something anybody could do.

…

After about two hours of hammering and reheating, during which I took a break to consume another sandwich and breath in air that was not saturated with smoke, I had finally finished my task. The blade was complete. I had also sanded off the black covering that turned out seem like excess carbon off of the flat of the sword, and it was looking glorious.

Holding it by the handle, I flicked the blade and was greeted by a satisfying hum in the air as the relatively thin blade vibrated as any good sword should do.

And now for the moment of truth. I channeled my chi into the sword and performed a sword strike. It was a glorious feeling. The sword was not instantly shattered and cut through the air smoothly. I could see that across the room a safety poster fluttered in the breeze generated from the chi-imbued strike.

Absolutely glorious.

Now, all I had to do was make a handle. But for now, I needed sleep.

…

At basically the crack of dawn, I ran down to the forges to work on a handle. I had chosen to use a rather dark wood. Getting a small carving knife to work on precision, I first drilled a hole through the handle that was the size of the sword's current handle, which was just a metal rod about twelve centimeters long and two point five centimeters in diameter. I didn't manage to mess this up, thankfully, and began working the wood.

I also had to forge a hilt, which wasn't as hard as making the sword. I drilled a hole in the center of the wood piece I was using to model it and made indents in it to possibly embroider something into the hilt just for aesthetic and to give the sword a little artistic depth. I also began working on a model of the pommel to cast as well. To save myself some time, I would probably solder it on instead of welding it.

As the metal melted, I continued working on texturing the grip.

I poured the molten metal from the crucible into the mold again, and waited for a good while, making some final edits to the armored glove design. There were indeed stores that sold chainmail.

At last, I was finished with everything with the sword, and I just had to put it together.

The sword was a little unbalanced, with the hilt being slightly heavier than the blade. Still, it was something that I had made with my own hands, and I was proud to call it a sword.

I then spent the next four days making a scabbard. It was much harder to make something that had to be hollow.

…

Now that I really compared Jaune's sword and my sword, the differences were apparent.

My sword was clearly inferior.

Whilst Crocea Mors was expertly crafted and perfectly symmetrical, with yellow accentuations on the blade, my sword still had black spots scattered over the flat of the blade and the tip was slightly skewed to the right, though not very obvious. Still, the difference was definitely noticeable when I swung the sword.

My scabbard was literally just two pieces of hollowed wood with metal plates inside to prevent the blade from biting at the wood. It took about six tries to create a bent sheet of metal until I learned the technique of taking a blowtorch to the cast as the metal was in it and cooling down. This allowed the metal to retain its shape and not to crack because of the awkward structure it was in. I didn't even bother to paint it. It did allow for a quick draw, but it was really heavy and I was considering sanding off a good layer of the wood.

Still, this was a great success.

" _I hope this doesn't break the first time I fight with it"_ I thought, walking out of the forge a changed man.

**AN: I finally did it! I finished the chapter.**

**Jeez. It took a long time. I had to research how a sword was made and stuff like that. I scrapped an old idea because it probably wasn't interesting enough.**

**Even if this chapter is slightly shorter than your average chapter, it's here! Yay!**

**Next chapter I'm going to probably uncover the can of worms that is another sentient species on Remnant.**


	21. A3 C5 Ice and Fire

**AN: Here is a very late chapter! Follow, favorite, and review! Motivation to write makes me write faster and stuff, so more feedback = more chapters!**

**Excerpt #11: Old Memories: "Socializing" Shenanigans.**

Again, the age-old problem had emerged.

Socializing. It was inevitable, considering I was in a class with thirty other people. I had done this song and dance before. Pretend I could see, try to perpetually squint, and keep listening to my mp3 player during breaks.

It was the best formula to keep people away, since nobody used mp3 players anymore and people who did probably weren't "interesting". Squinting hopefully kept people away from my supposedly exotic eye color, a murky silver (whatever that looked like).

In these schools, there were so many students and so little rooms that it was the teacher that came to the student, not the student that went to the teacher. This made sure that the hallways wouldn't clog, and also made my life much more convenient since I didn't have to walk through the stampede that was a herd of college students running to their next class (I had tried walking to the cafeteria after class ended on the first day and ended up almost trampled). The point was, there were a lot of people around and it was both a blessing and a curse; providing a good crowd for me to blend into but making actually functioning as a blind person with social anxiety difficult.

That formula worked up to the third week. Of course our class had to have one social butterfly.

I could hear the footsteps approaching during that fateful moment, amid the hubbub of the student's roughhousing and the button mashing of whatever people were doing.

"I've talked to almost every person in the class now, except you." A voice said. It was kind of high pitched, and definently belonged to a girl.

That only made things worse! I screamed internally and pretended not to hear, preferring to concentrate on the droning of the history professor talking about the discovery of gunpowder.

"I don't really even know your name yet, so… hello?"

She waved a hand in front of my eyes. I could feel the slight gust on my face. I closed them.

"Are you really asleep?" she mused.

I just did nothing, screaming mentally for her just to go away and let me live my life. She probably had good intentions, but I really didn't want to become the local blind person again.

High school was a nightmare after that happened, and people wanted to guide me everywhere when I had memorized how to go there.

"I'll leave it to you then." She muttered, standing up and finally walking away.

I mentally applauded myself for keeping cool and continued to do nothing.

…

Still, this repeated the next day.

God damn it. She really was persistent, if nothing else.

I couldn't fall asleep again, could I? I had to at least make conversation.

"Hey there! You might not have hard me last time I tried to speak with you since you were asleep, but… hello!"

I didn't need to hear or feel anything to detect the awkwardness in the air.

"… I have social anxiety and I really don't like talking. Sorry." I said like it was a prerecorded phone message.

She laughed nervously, the tone of her voice obviously growing more and more depressed.

"Sorry… so uh, what's your name?"

"Mei Zhiling." I said, trying not to stutter.

"Cool!" she said enthusiastically, seemingly revitalized by the introduction of a new conversation topic. "My name's Tang ShuXian! I'm hoping we can be friends!"

"… Social anxiety, remember?" I said, trying to cut off this venue of social contact before it even began.

"… Oh." She said, "Well, you don't look very nervous right now."

"I learned to not show it. It makes people actually want to talk to me." I said dryly. I could feel the cold sweat trickle down my back.

For a moment, I could feel her scrutinize me.

Then, it finally ceased.

"Well, I'm sorry for bothering you." She sighed, before walking away.

As her footsteps pattered away, I felt like laughing in relief but decided not to (I would probably look like a lunatic if I did.).

Little did I know, this was still the first trial of many. Because something called dorm mates still existed.

With how much I was pretending to hide my social anxiety and pretend to just be antisocial and not full on freaking out, I could probably have applied for a masters in acting or something. I understood now why poor blind people didn't go to college. It really was too stressful.

**(End Log #11.)**

…

…

It was time…

I dreaded this task as much as I did in my previous life. The nerves were getting to me. The feeling of oppressive, unfamiliar emotional development was imminent.

The consequences of such a necessary, yet terrifying act were dire, and it would open up new boundaries for anxiety.

What one could view as a herculean task would have to be undertaken today.

I sighed and steeled my nerves, preparing for the fallout of such a dastardly act, before marching forward to my intended target.

Posturing was very important in this line of work. Discreetly, I crouched slightly and leaned forward, pretending to examine my plate of beans. It was honestly a very interesting plate of beans. With such rich colors and defined shape-

Oh, who was I kidding. I was bound to do this anyways.

I sidled up to Jaune and coughed, then sighed.

"… I need to know everybody's names." I muttered.

"What?" Jaune turned at me and gave me a _look._ "You really _still_ don't know everybody's names?"

"… I was more focused on adjusting to school and- well, I'm not even going to look for an excuse."

For a moment, I looked far older than I theoretically was, but then I restrained my expression.

"… It's just going to get even more awkward."

"Oh." Jaune said, stuttering a bit.

"The girl wearing a red cape is Ruby, the one with the white hair is Weiss, the one with the blonde hair that you really shouldn't fight is Yang, and the one with a bow is Blake."

I nodded, almost contemplating taking notes before realizing that it would just really be weird.

"They're team RWBY, pronounced like the gem, and Ruby is the leader."

"So the team leads itself?" I said, contemplating the idea of a democracy. It did sound better than the hypocrisy that was the _People's_ Republic of China.

"No, it's just that Ruby, the person, is the leader of team RWBY."

"… Who named these teams?"

"The headmaster. Why do you ask? Is it confusing?"

"… Never mind. What about your team?"

"There's Pyrrha, you know her, right? The one that likes pancakes is Nora-"

"Wait, I think I remember them. The energetic one and the one with the tea, right… was his name Rin or something?"

"Ren." Jaune said, sighing.

"Okay, so their names are Ruby, Whine, Yang, and … Bland? Doesn't sound right."

"Oh dust-" Jaune groaned. "Just let me draw you a diagram or something."

"Sorry." I muttered, face meeting my hand once I realized the words that I had just vomited out. "I'm just bad with names."

"I noticed, Yun." Jaune said. "I noticed."

…

"Since Mr. Wu has _not been attending class_ for supposed personal reasons" Professor Goodwich glared at me subtly, "This combat class, he will be fighting again."

It was my least favorite time of the day again. Combat class. Seriously, who thought that putting kids in a circle and letting them duke it out was a good idea! I did beat Pyrrha, who was supposedly a championship fighter, but there was still that one unknown factor: Dust.

Apparently, dust could be applied in combat. It was definitely not magic, according to the class, and was totally scientific. There was a whole field of study based on the crystals and it was basically just seeing what would explode when combined with what (if the forums online were correct about it).

The thing is, you can't do that kind of thing with electricity! Or fire! Or wind! What even is wind dust? Stored momentum or something?

This world was confusing… Even after sixteen years here the mysteries of the sciences were still nebulous shadows plaguing my mindscape.

"… and you will be fighting Weiss Schnee."

The white haired one. Right. Why did she look kind of scared?

I shrugged before trying to convince _myself_ to not panic. Combat always made me nervous. Even if I had been trained for over a decade, I was still a blind engineering student at heart.

After putting on my combat robes (grimacing as I noticed that they were falling apart and I desperately needed new ones), I got my sword out of my locker and looked at the blade.

This would be its first real test. Would it break under the pressures of Chi and combat? Only fighting would tell.

… (3rd person Weiss POV)

Weiss didn't really know what to think about Yun. When hearing his name, Weiss remembered the person that beat _the Pyrrha Nikos_ and made her father lose a bet he made with somebody online called "drunkbird42".

When looking at him in real life, she saw an insecure and terribly antisocial person that acted like a skittish animal around dust.

With these conflicting views, she was both terrified at Yun's fame but also sort of looked down on him for being a son of some poor farmer that had never seen the world or used dust.

Still, she knew one thing. She was going to try her best to beat him.

…(1rst Person Yun POV)

Walking onto the stage was terrifying, as usual. At least this time I wasn't fighting anybody with a gun or a sniper as a weapon. The impracticality and lethality of Crescent Rose made me want to analyze it like the engineering student I was and run away screaming like the coward I really was.

This girl used a… rapier? Yeah, one of those action novels I listened to mentioned Europeans using these things mostly for stabbing attacks.

I could deal with those. There was no way that this girl's movements would be faster than Xin's, right?

"Three, two, one, and… Begin!" Professor Goodwitch's voice said, before pressing a button and making a dark dome envelope the stage so that we couldn't see anything outside the dome but the spectators could see us. For a moment, I thought about how in the world the dome was created before returning my gaze to the girl in front of me.

Who just summoned white circles under her feet and was gliding on them towards me. What in the world.

I sidestepped and drew my sword, holding it defensively, before realizing that my sidestep was completely useless and the path of white circles somehow tracked my movements. A rapier was almost pointed right at my face when I parried it by smacking it upwards with my sword.

Before the unyielding steel of the rapier, my very thin sword bent a little before the rapier was forced upwards and my sword righted itself once more. Thankfully, it didn't break.

I followed up with my counterattack, trying to kick my opponent in the gut, but a white circle appeared in mid air and somehow blocked my attack.

What.

I pushed off of the impromptu barrier and rested myself at the edge of the arena, thinking about the multiple laws of physics that were just violated.

Again, you can't do those kind of things with your soul! How does that even make sense! Well, Chi didn't make any sense either but at least it has a clearly outlined process of air to energy conversion!

Firstly, creating photons without utilizing the photoelectric effect and just creating them out of nowhere would need the same amount of energy that it took to create a lightning bolt, seeing as ionized air gave off a glow. Secondly, Weiss (was that her name?) wasn't even in contact with the area that the barrier appeared!

Lastly, how in the world was ionized air solid?

This probably had something to do with the Aura thingy that shielded people and whatnot, but this was on a whole other level!

How was I supposed to beat her?

Before I could finish my train of thought, more white circles appeared out of nowhere right beside the girl, her rapier glowed blue, and with a pirouette that spoke of at least some dancing practice, four chunks of ice were ejected out of the impossible constructs.

My mind literally crashed.

_Error. Does not compute._

How is ice created out of literally nowhere?

I had to deal with the miniature icebergs flying at me first. Two were positioned in such a way so that I couldn't really jump over them or sidestep without exiting the arena dome (resulting in disqualification), and one was coming straight at me while the fourth was over the one that was about to hit me straight in the sternum and force me out of the arena.

Luckily, there was nothing on the ground and there was a small gap between the ice and the floor.

I promptly face planted and felt something really cold whiz over my face, before standing up again. I reoriented myself from my rapid movements before seeing a crescent of fire coming at me.

I gave up trying to rationalize ice and fire appearing out of nowhere and just dodged. I jumped.

Wait, was that lightning? I promptly threw my sword at it and watched the electricity track onto the metal object instead. I fell to the ground, picked up my sword, and looked up just to see another chunk of ice fly at my face.

Without time to think, I steadied my stance, overloaded my arm with Chi, and punched the ice.

The first thing that I noticed about overloading my arm with Chi and punching ice was the pain.

Bones were not meant to be used as ice picks. I felt like it was going to fracture. The blood vessels on my arm burst, spraying a bit of blood on the inside of my sleeve. Then, something reacted and fixed the damage.

The next thing I noticed was the snow. My chi-empowered strike probably channeled its power into the ice block and made it start flaking off, seeing as ice was technically not organic and thus did not hold life energy very well.

The last thing I noticed was the wind. A gust flowed out of my body, making the "snow" I had produced by shattering part of the block of ice go in wild directions and make the whole battlefield very frosty and unclear.

I subconsciously cut down my Chi usage, because burst blood vessels usually meant that I done irreversible put my circulatory system and using more Chi to fight would only worsen the situation and make my wounds worse. I actually didn't need to, because my soul actually healed me.

I could make out a violet glow coming from my sleeve and a pleasant warmth washed over my arm. I channeled my Chi through the previously bloody arm and was surprised to find that it was in prime condition.

" _Which means that as long as my soul doesn't run out of healing power, I can keep using Chi bursts!"_ I thought, already preparing to clear the field. I forced all the chi in my system to bubble to the surface again, before ordering it to all get out. A violent burst of wind swept away the snow and cleared the arena. A couple of blood vessels burst, but healed immediately afterwards, the violet glow and pleasant warmth appearing all over my body this time, and I was totally fine. Other than being completely exhausted from using all of my Chi.

My opponent was swept back by the wind, but managed not to move that much by stabbing her rapier into the concrete and holding onto the handle. She then stood up, did some weird hand motions, and I noticed that I was now completely surrounded by white circles.

Crap.

Ice chunks began flying out of each circle, pelting me with bits of sharp ice. I batted away some of the projectiles with my sword but the others still hit my back and my extremities. Amid the chaos, I didn't notice that Weiss had jumped over the circles, landed in front of me, and hit me in the gut with her rapier.

I was thrown towards the edge of the arena. I could feel some of my organs taking damage, and the warmth appeared again and healed the wounds.

Still, I was heading towards the edge of the arena.

Gathering up the remaining dregs of my Chi, I reinforced my sword, and as I was about to go out of the arena, I placed the tip of the sword on the concrete to stop my motion.

For a moment, I stopped moving. Then, the sword began to bend from my momentum.

Everything was suddenly silent as I stared intently at my sword, begging it to not break.

Thankfully, it didn't. The sword made an odd humming sound, righted itself, and I was bounced back onto my feet, right at the edge of the arena. I raised my sword again, ready to defend myself and counterattack if necessary, but then a buzzer sounded, and the dome fell.

"… Mr. Wu's aura has dropped into the red. Weiss Schnee wins."

I put down my sword and looked up at a screen displaying our faces and some sort of bars below our names. Mine was flashing red, while Weiss's was some sort of greenish-yellow.

"Mr. Wu, despite your acrobatics and creative use of your weapon, you were still unprepared for the versatility that came with Ms. Schnee's semblance. I commend your effort, but try to prepare for an opponent that uses dust next time."

I sighed. It was over.

Even if I had lost, I had still survived the fight. What was I supposed to do against an opponent who was throwing icebergs and barriers around like they were cheap parlor tricks?

Walking back to the locker rooms to change back into our uniforms, I knew that I was going to have to train even more now that another dangerous factor had been introduced: people with elemental powers.

…

**AN" And that's a chapter, with what is probably the longest fight scene I had written.**

**Yun was going to have to suffer through an opponent that uses dust eventually, and who better to lose against than Weiss Schnee?**

**My argument for Weiss winning: Dust. Yun is a great technical fighter, but against people that had powers that probably seemed like magic to him, there would be a bit of a shock factor. Besides, dust is insanely overpowered and we have seen Weiss use dust like that several times in the show, during the Vytal (am I spelling this right) festival and various character shorts.**

**Rewatching those scenes from volumes 1,2, and 3, I realized that the fight scenes in volume 4 and beyond were missing so much potential and awesomeness! Instead of using crazy elemental powers, Weiss just… summons a knight and watch it clumsily do its thing, swing her rapier, and glide on glyphs.**

**It's almost as if they spent more money animating the whole thing than hiring a good fight scene producer (if it really exists.)**

**Again, hope you had fun reading! Follow, favorite, and review!**


	22. A3 C6 Out of a Storybook

Rwby Volume 8 is out!

It's… okay. The animation got slightly better but the fight scenes aren't really as epic as before, to be perfectly honest. Jaune gets a new bomb and… Penny uses her maiden powers exactly like Amber did… to similar results… yay…..

Such excitement…

At least I look forward to how they finally resolve this Salem thing (though there's going to be a RWBY Volume 9, so we're in for a long wait.)

Onto the chapter!

-Spirit

Excerpt # 12: Projects

Teamwork was something to be dreaded. We didn't really have projects back at the village (and wow, I really sound like a rural peasant) but in High school, things were different.

People were actually really empathetic, albeit a bit annoying with questions and offers of assistance. In the end I really ended up in some sort of reverse exclusion situation. It wasn't inclusion because it was totally unwanted, but I did appreciate the gesture. It really did get smothering after a while, but I escaped from high school to college and now, teamwork was on the horizon again.

Except it really wasn't. Thank god for odd-numbered classes. The new project of working on a motor was pretty easy. All I really had to do was tape rods to a battery, shove another rod through the thing that had a circular bit on it, and place a magnet on a battery. When the current runs through the rod, the circular bit on the rod between the two stands holding up the rod, and let the magnet do its work through attracting electrons that were flowing through the metal and temporarily giving it a bit of charge.

Sounds complicated? Not exactly. Trying to fix the electricity back home was harder, and I could do it when I was a middle schooler.

A couple of twists and turns later, finally fumbling out the correct orientation for the electric tape that I was provided, and I had a working motor. I quickly dismantled the thing so I wouldn't have to be the first to turn it in. It was too attention grabbing and I would probably have to explain the thing to the class.

So I just sat there for a while, fidgeting with the parts and trying not to make the battery explode by short circuiting it (that had actually happened once in the previous years, according to the teacher, and that was why our budget had been cut).

College wasn't very exciting if you had hands-on experience doing practical things before.

…

(Back to Yun)

…

School was totally new territory now that I was actually normal and the curriculum was challenging.

I mean, apparently you could learn to use magic in this world. Well, dust isn't magic, and making ice spires and electricity emerge out of nowhere was totally scientific and not mind breaking at all.

Sitting in the cafeteria and wondering how much of the Beacon budget was allocated towards buying fresh swordfish (I swore there were like five served every day with the rest of the upper class foods that were served).

All in all, Beacon was nothing like a typical college. With occasional fights to the "death" (or aura break), very dedicated cosplayers, and bombs (dust deposits) in the chemistry lab, there was never a dull day here.

Take what was happening now, for instance. One cosplayer was so dedicated that she literally was almost pulled off the chair by somebody else pulling on her ear props.

"You guys seeing this?" I asked, nudging the person that sat behind me and pointed discreetly at the odd scene.

"Yeah." Yang whispered back. "Cardin's always been a jerk."

"Did he grow up with an intense hate of cosplaying props or something?"

With this statement, Blake promptly exploded.

…

Well, not literally.

It was more like she sprouted a bunch of civil rights facts that would make my old communist propaganda teacher impressed.

By god, with all of the stuff she was saying about "the people's suffering" and whatever whatever "not being equal", and it's "people like you that make all of this garbage happen", it really just sounded like a phamplet.

I guess I had to apologize.

"Sorry…" I said bashfully (though not entirely sincerely, since I was still really skeptical of the biological credibility of there being another race called the Faunus on Remnant), "I just didn't know that they existed."

It was almost like I had dropped another dust crystal in the dust lab and everybody dove under the desks again.

"You've never seen a faunus?" Yang said, looking at me like I was some sort of alien creature.

…

(AN: Oh the irony xD. If you get the joke, pat yourself on the back.)

…

"Yeah, I was pretty isolated when I grew up."

"How isolated do you have to be to not know what a faunus is?" Blake asked, still silently fuming, her golden eyes staring into my silver eyes as if daring me to say something offensive.

"Like, I lived on this farm in the middle of nowhere in Mistral, with no company except for an anematic ninja, bandit tribes trying to kill me, and no internet or whatever you call it."

The table was silent again. Blake widened her eyes and sat down slowly, her bow moving erratically. It was almost as if something was trapped under it, but I didn't comment on it. If I did, I would probably be branded as a racist again.

"… Oh."

"Well, what is a faunus? Don't tell me they just grow extra ears and look-"

Blake glared at me again. I cowered a bit, not wanting to piss off the bundle of civil rights activism that Blake probably was.

"- like … uh…. They've … gained a couple of extra chromosomes that allowed them to mutate to such a degree?"

More staring. I was seriously going to panic if I really was at the center of attention this often.

"You guys do know what chromosomes are, right?"

It turns out they didn't.

…

(AN: The next section contains thoughts about the Faunus, how they exist, and genetic differences between the two races. If it seems offensive to anybody, just keep in mind that in Remnant's case, these are actually two different species and most of the phrasing basically comes from The world of remnant series that's on Youtube, except worded a bit differently and with a bit of commentary.

Basically, Don't take it too seriously. It's meant to be thought provoking, not insulting or racist.)

…

Lying in bed that night, I wondered about some serious topics: Why the faunus haven't taken over the world yet.

They had night vision. Enhanced reflexes. Animal traits that helped them survive in the cruel, primordial place that was early remnant.

They did not fear the dark, nor were they any weaker than humans, or any less intelligent. In fact, their genes were dominant in the gene pool and any human-faunus mix would produce a human.

Firstly, that was impossible. For a human to breed with a faunus, several genetic laws would have to be broken. Secondly, even if they did produce offspring, they would probably not be able to breed (similar to horses and donkeys breeding to produce mules, but mules themselves can't breed).

Lastly, with physical and genetic dominance, they should have dominated the world stage.

Seriously. Night vision and enhanced hearing was probably really useful. They could kill Grimm with claws or something (some faunus had traits that could actually be applicable in combat, like cameoflage, a version of flight, or shooting webs), not fear ambushes during the night, and any humans they met would eventually be assimilated into the gene pool via their genetic dominance.

They had existed since the beginning too, which also brings out the question of where did the faunus come from? It was impossible for monkeys or apes to evolve into two separate, but similar, organism types, one which had a basically random animal trait.

Also, how did their ear canals function? Would they have to have two sets of eardrums? Two holes in their skull? Two separate parts of the brain that took in auditory signals?

What? The? Heck?

Confusion reigned that night as I slept soundly.

…

And the very next day's afternoon, Blake had … ran away? Because of civil rights issues that were directly related and probably caused by that brief conversation yesterday.

It was on a Friday, apparently, and she hadn't been back since. Well, today was Saturday. A day that I actually happened to have work to do.

In light of my total financial instability (with my bank account at double digits of lien), I had flown back to Vale and got my job back from the machine shop owner Jade.

"Student loans, am I right?" He said, eyes crinkling and lips twitching upwards, as he paid me the advance check. I had already worked for him before, and he now knew that I had been going to Beacon.

"I know that you can take apart servos and maintain then, but you need a better sword than that primitive thing." He had said, pointing to the sword I had on my belt.

"What's wrong with it?" I asked him, eyebrows raised and putting down the pistol-scimitar hybrid I was looking over and cleaning.

"No ranged option at all." He had said, drawing the sword out and flicking it with his finger. "Tell you what. Whenever you have a new idea for a weapon cooked up, just tell me and I'll call some people. Get you a real weapon, if you know what I mean."

That phrasing really was odd. And the laughter that followed it wasn't reassuring at all.

Still, for whatever reason, I was out late that night. I figured that I might as well check out the local river.

Rivers were interesting. A life bringing construct of nature, yes. But also one of the hosts to the most intense fight scene I had ever read.

The rivers, white with foam, thundered down the rough streambed. Guo Jing stumbled after a particularly vicious palm strike from his opponent, before looking back just in time to steel his stance and parry another.

Besides him, Huang Rong somersaulted across the deck, her emerald bamboo stave twirling back and forth as she fought a mysterious third party. Holding thin metal sheets like daggers, the figure fought aggressively, yet with caution.

Sitting down and getting his head out of his past life, he lamented the fact that there would probably never be another action novel as good as that one written ever, in both worlds. The author of that entrancing series had died two years before he did.

"It's kind of odd to think of myself in the past tense." I mumbled, my feet trailing in the water, my boots creating ripples on the flowing water that were gone instantly, the tiny bit of momentum insignificant in the winding river. A nice little reminder of the final moments of my last life, falling asleep as the stream carried me onwards in the polluted waters.

And that philosophical, poetic moment was interrupted by an explosion.

I looked up at the cloud of flames on my side of the shore, furrowed my brows, and shouted.

"Do you mind?" I said, my voice echoing across the water. "I'm trying to relax here."

I only had about fifteen minutes before the last bullhead to Beacon takes off.

Then I realized that there was an explosion over there, and what in the world was happening?

Showing remarkable lack of self preservation, I elected to go investigate. Now that I really look back at it, it didn't make sense at all. Why would I go towards an explosion? Did I really want to reincarnate a third time and die by a river again?

Arriving at a shipyard, I sighed at the cliché area for a standoff to occur. Could they not have chosen something less out of a storybook? Drawing my sword and leaping onto a shipping container, I looked at the situation.

It was pretty chaotic. Some guy wearing a white suit was shooting what looked like flares at Blake, who was doing backflips to avoid the attacks. Somehow, it worked.

The man was probably muttering something that was associated with cats, as well.

If that guy had a real gun, like a pistol, Blake would have been screwed.

Well, I was here already so I might as well help her, right? One student to another?

I dashed out of cover to hide behind another crate that was slightly closer to the target (the man that was still spamming explosives out of his gun), climbed on top of it again, took off the hoodie I was wearing, and threw it at him.

It was a valid disorientation tactic. When the enemy would be confused as to why cloth was snagged on their weapon when experienced fighters instinctually parried the attack, I would take this opportunity to close the distance between me and the gun to actually not die from high powered explosives.

It worked. The cane poked into my hoodie and a flare was shot through it, which exploded harmlessly against the metal surface that was the shipping crate as I leaped at him, sword aimed straight at his face.

The man looked at me with vague surprise and bought his cane up to intercept. However, the response was greatly delayed by the hoodie skewered on the weapon (and god damn it my bank account can't buy me that many good hoodies!) and he had to settle for an awkward dodge.

All the while, I had reached the ground, let go of my sword, and grabbed onto the cane that he still had extended out in the air and pulled. The weapon was firmly in his grip so the man came tumbling down as well. My sword somehow glanced off of his suit (maybe it was made of something durable?) before I noticed a white sheen glow off of the suit.

Aura could also be applied to clothes as well? That was slightly annoying.

The man's face hit pavement, but there was a noticeable lack of pain. I picked up my sword, tossed away the cane-gun, and rapidly hit a pressure point on the man's back. Aura surged against my chi for a while, but it eventually gave in and he was paralyzed, at least for now.

Blake had come back from her running spree by now.

"He's…" she trailed off when she saw me inspecting my ruined hoodie besides what looked like a mildy spasming white suit.

"Did you just take out Roman Torchwick in about five seconds?"

"Maybe." I said, looking at the hole in the black fabric in disbelief. Did flares really have that much penetrating power?

"Damn. This one's ruined. I'll have to fix it." I mused, tying it around my waist because it was convenient.

Then, I heard mechanical whirring before some people dropped behind my backs. I could hear gun loading and swords being ready.

"God damn it." I said, readying my sword. "Of course he has to have accomplices.

I didn't really need to . A blonde blurr whizzed over my head and I heard several grunts of pain and people slammed against a shipping container.

"Nice moves, dude!" a rather chipper voice said. I turned around to see a person showing an impressive amount of abdominal muscle (and I totally wasn't lowkey jealous) and … a blonde tail. Probably another faunus.

"I can take it from here." Some sort of staff was deployed and I could hear shotgun cracks (?) as the staff broke apart into nunchucks and bullets were rained onto simple thieves.

"Are you sure they're actually still alive?" I asked him.

"They probably have aura unlocked if they jumped down from a plane, so I just assumed they would." He shrugged, before turning to deal with the other crowd.

"True." I said, throwing my hoodie at a person that was about to shoot him in the back.

And then I was hit in the back of the head. My ears began ringing as I sank to the floor and looked at the previously downed criminal wearing a white suit (was it Romance Dirtkick or something like that?) pointing the cane barrel at me.

I gulped.

I heard the sound of something heavy hitting metal.

"Oh, hello Red." I heard Dirtkick say. "Isn't it past your-"

I really didn't want to listen to the rest of the monologue so I just kicked his feet, hit the back of his head, and hit two pressure points this time. His aura didn't react as strongly, but amid the concussion-like wound and the very challenging Chi control I was using to keep the man down, I felt kind of ready to not remain conscious anymore.

Then, I felt the back of my head warm up a bit (pleasantly) and my vision cleared. Aura really was amazing and overpowered.

Another bullet hit somebody with a red scythe in the chest, and they was sent tumbling back. The other person that was on the balcony, somebody in a green skirt and wearing a backpack jumped off the container as about a dozen swords shot out of said bag.

I'm pretty sure I was hallucinating, but I saw the swords follow her commands like she was some sort of swordbender or something.

Maybe that was her personal superpower?

I then saw the storm of blades bowl down a set of grunts, sending them flying into the air. Surprisingly, none of them looked injured but just really out of it.

Definitely hallucinating.

Aircraft then flew by, and making the correct choice, I dove behind a shipping container. The swordbender, however, looked fearless in the hail of bullets, deflecting them by somehow rotating her array of swords in the air rapidly.

What. Again, physics doesn't work that way!

(But then again, with superpowers, force fields powered via soul, and snowflake patterned barriers, what do I know?)

Still, as the bullheads circled the place, dropping more grunts down and shooting their turrets at us, what could we do?

I just hoped for the best and tried not to freak out.

What was I supposed to do against aircraft fire? Throw my sword at the plane?

…

That's the finish of this accursed chapter that has bought us into the next arc.

This was my take on the combat situation. The choreography just seemed odd, and as I watched that specific clip again, so many things really didn't make sense. Like how rotating staves manage to block explosives that can break concrete.

Anyways, rant about physics aside, I'm actually really stoked about the new RWBY episodes. (Well, not really. I'm just looking forward to see how they defeat Salem.)

Please follow, favorite, and review!

-Spirit


	23. A3 C7 New Beginnings

**(Crawls out of recycling basket full of papers)**

**I have returned!**

**My eyes are burning up now because I've been using the computer so much. I've got to take a break.**

**Anyways, merry late Christmas and have a happy new year!**

**Discord! (** **/8Jzasj6cxj)**

**-Spirit**

Excerpt #13: Home

It had been a long time since I had visited the farm back home. The bus fair was very expensive and navigating the whole thing was a hassle.

After asking a lot of people where the bus station was (and, for once, willing to admit my weakness), I felt countless footsteps clatter on the cold marble floors, and heard the rustling clothes of passersby squeezing past each other to get to the ticket lines. I got out an old cane, put on sunglasses, and began making my way noisily to one of the lines. The crowds of people parted, and my stick only occasionally hit the railings of the fences.

It was nice, knowing that society at least had basic decency.

The bus ride back was certainly nostalgic. There was so much noise, mechanical beeping from some teenager's game, and the general chatter of bored people. The roads were rough, sending vibrations through the bus constantly.

At last, after a couple of very forced naps and exhausting my collection of audio books, I finally emerged out into a semi-familiar street.

It didn't really look the same (but then again, how would I know? I just assumed that change would be natural during the years when I was gone.) but it smelled like… rice fields and stale, turned dirt. It smelled of cut potatoes waiting to be planted, and chestnuts being collected and extracted from their spiky outer shells to be roasted over the fire, the distinct smell rendered faint over the overwhelming stench that came from last year's decaying leaves.

The description I gave definitely wasn't very flattering, but no matter how many former bullies lived here, it was home.

The next generation was already here. I could hear the very distinct sounds of children tumbling in the grass, shrieking and laughing with no restraint.

It was home. Humble and simple.

Yeah. Not everything in life had to be overexciting or dramatic. Sometimes, things just happen very normally.

I had taken off my headphones, the two cheap, plastic bits dangling from my pocket and almost trailing on the ground.

I did use the pay phone with the Braille lettering to call my parents. They should know that I would be here, right?

Right?

For a moment, I felt… almost cold.

And then I almost jumped out of my skin. So many voices were shouting, "Welcome home!"

I dropped my cane and tote bag (one that I had scavenged from all of those business ad campaigns) in surprise.

As everybody came together for a hug (probably trampling the "gifts", which were basically school supply surpluses I had bought back for everybody), I felt metaphorically brighter than ever before.

Amidst the smell of sweat and dirt, I laughed.

"Since when was I this popular?"

…

I sat down at the usual spot that me and my friend usually sat, felt the stump that bore countless scratches from my worn pencils carving at the paper, trying to memorize the shape of the characters that had eluded me until I was seven and managed to submit my own written essays.

He would also laugh at me when I failed rather spectacularly, but I knew it wasn't cruel laughter. I had learned to tell the difference long ago.

Then, I heard the crunch of the grass behind me.

"We've all changed, you know? But especially you."

He sat down.

I sighed.

"I think I've changed too much."

…

…

The world really has changed way too much.

I didn't realize it at first, but now…

"How was that girl still alive? She's been deflecting bullets for about ten seconds!"

Also, physics doesn't work like that! Although physics barely applies anyways. Did we have any weapons that shot high explosives and could destroy an aircraft?

Wait, that dude had one. I picked up …that guy's… (I still don't know his name) weapon, that cane gun flare thing, looked for a trigger, and flipped a random switch.

A crosshairs popped up from the front of the cane-gun and I peered through it, aiming for the aircraft, and was about to fire-

When a green laser shout out from the middle of nowhere and literally melted the aircraft, cutting them in half.

It was that overpowered sword bending girl again.

"Was… that lowkey murder or just blatant murder?" I said, looking at the wreckages of the bullhead flying into the river. "And I'm pretty sure that the fuel in that thing isn't good for the environment.".

Even the guy with the especially prominent abs looked vaguely concerned after he himself kicked a bunch of people into a shipping container.

I heard two aircraft taking off, one with a very distinct white coat still hanging out the door, and the other with a shipping crate attached to its underbelly. Swords were thrown at the ship with the heavier load, and as if to completely do in my understanding of reality, was dragged back by a teenage girl… somehow… and thrown into the harbor again.

"How is she doing that…" I heard a high pitched voice mumble.

And then everybody was silent for a while.

"You know, is the stuff in this shipyard that you supposedly saved enough to pay for the collateral damage that you just inflicted?"

"Oh." The girl chirped. Beneath those deep, green eyes and that unassuming bow, I felt the shiver that her sociopathic tendencies sent me, the monster within secretly lurked within an innocent body, staring at us like we were lambs at the slaughter and waiting to literally bisect the people around her.

Then she blinked. And that feeling was gone. And she seemed much more human.

"According to my calculations, this shipment of dust remaining is not actually very high grade and worth about…. 20 million lien while the collateral damage caused by a lightning dust spill, two bisected bullheads, about twenty five destroyed dust crates, and a…."

A building collapsed behind us, and the crane toppled.

"And _three_ destroyed piece of dock equipment, the total would amount to…." She said, suddenly shrinking back into herself.

"How much does shooting a laser with that power even cost? Considering the fact that you don't have a laser cannon, that beam of energy appeared right in thin air, right?"

The girl nodded. "The process is documented as an aura technique that huntsmen can utilize if they have the appropriate specialized equipment to gather dust from storage into the air in powder form, before channeling aura through it and sending it in a unidirectional beam by also channeling hard light dust at a minimum capacity in the shape of a funnel pointed in the direction that the target is in. The cost…."

She stood there for a while, swords floating back into her backpack, and then muttered something about telling her father to be more economically efficient about her construction, before running out of the shipyard.

"Wait, Penny!" Ruby, the person that had been hit by a high powered explosive said, holding out a hand and made as if to run after her, before stopping and turning to what was the target of her operation: Blake.

I also began my own version of running away. "I had no hand in this vandalism. I was being a good Samaritan and…"

The police showed up.

"Darn it." I said, picking up my sword and sheathing it. "Guess this month's paycheck is gone too."

…

Thankfully, I didn't actually have to pay for the things. Apparently one of the team members of the girl who got hit by an explosive was actually the heiress of the company that owned the whole shipyard, and they didn't press charges!

(It must be really nice to be that rich.)

It was lunchtime again, but this time, I now had another problem.

What exactly were the rules of physics in this world? I don't really understand...

I looked at Nora casually ignoring projectile motion and the tensile strength of iron as she used a spoon as an impromptu catapult to launch grapes into Yang's mouth.

Ok.

I crossed out the ton of calculations I had about projectile motion and just wrote " _Expect the unexpected"._

Suddenly, a loud _thump_ was heard, and all of our cutlery rattled. Ruby had slammed a disproportionally sized binder onto the table

"Sister. Friends." Ruby began, pompously. "Weiss."

"Hey!" said heiress in question said, clearly slightly irritated in being a category consisting of only herself.

"Four score and seven minutes ago, I had a dream."

Wait, did Abraham Lincoln exist here?

"This ought to be good." Yang mumbled, looking at Ruby's suddenly not socially awkward self with interest.

"A dream that one day, that the four of us would come together _as a team_ and have the most fun that anybody has had, ever!"

"Did you steal my binder?" Weiss said, eyeing the abomination on the table. The neatly printed font that said notes was crossed out, and instead, in red marker, the words "Best day ever activities" was scribbled messily.

"I am not a crook." Ruby said quickly, holding up two peace signs and stage whispering.

"What are you talking about?" Blake said, amber eyes flashing. Now that I knew she was actually a cat faunus, the animal traits were coming together (even if, again, biologically, she didn't make _any_ sense.)

"I'm talking about starting this semester with a _bang!_ " Ruby said enthusiastically, throwing her fists into the air.

"I always start my semesters with a _Yang."_ Yang said, presumably attempting to use wordplay.

The table groaned. Blake flipped a page in her notebook. I crossed out another physics property that didn't apply here. Goodbye, conservation of mass. You will be missed.

An apple was thrown at Yang, and tidbits of conversation continued until the situation was escalated by… a cream pie flying into Weiss's face.

Blake looked like a startled cat. Ruby and Yang, meanwhile looked like startled birds.

Weiss and Ren were just done with the situation.

…

Nora cackled on top of her table-tower.

"I'm queen of the castle, I'm queen of the castle!"

I crossed out more items about friction, huddled behind a pillar but observing the spectacle.

Ruby stepped onto a table, and various plates and food items flew into the air rather forcefully, shattering on the floor.

"Justice will be painful. Justice will be swift!"

She then clenched her fist, crushing a milk carton. The liquids didn't ooze out of the package, but created beautiful parabolas that arced onto the ground, splattering across the floor.

"It will be delicious!"

Her teammates cheered.

I was tempted to cross off gravity from the list at this point.

The chaos began. Yang somehow got her hands on a turkey and Ren parried it with… a leek?

Goodbye tensile strength.

Watermelons in numbers that rivaled what remained of my paycheck (in lien) cascaded down onto the battlefield, the green fruits shattering and letting the red pulp scatter everywhere.

"Yun!" Jaune yelled, almost being thrown at a window. "Help!"

I crossed out the whole page, wrote " _Physics not found. Please contact a scientist or the local god._ " , before acting to help my student.

I had also shrugged off my white dress shirt. Wouldn't want to waste money dry cleaning all of the fruit juice from it.

"Uh… you fiends!" I said, halfheartedly. "Stop wasting food. It's not good for the environment."

"Yeah, tell them, Yun!" "Your rebellion against the Queen of Pancakes will not matter!"

Pyrrha said nothing, still a little frosty from the fact that I had broken her tournament streak, and also mad for something I definitely didn't understand.

"With the power of student and teacher, your attacks will be quashed!" Jaune said pompously, for once actually having real confidence. "Cease this now, or face the wrath of…"

"The pressure point that causes itches all over your body for two hours." I said dryly, cracking my knuckles.

My opponents shivered, but advanced nevertheless.

I picked up a chopstick, flipped it in my hands to get a sense of it, and ducked as a long piece of French bread swung over my head. I tossed my chopstick up, making it spin, before flicking it at a pressure point on Weiss's leg. Paying no mind to the tiny projectile, she winced as it struck a pressure point that rendered the whole leg immobile temporarily. The amount of Chi sent through the weapon wasn't enough to go the full two hours of pressure point activation, but it was still definitely an annoyance.

As the chopstick bounced back up, I ducked down, caught the "weapon" between my two fingers, and avoided a fish slap from Blake.

We both then moved to avoid a watermelon that Nora had pitched at us, the contents of the fruit ending up as fine red mist that spread over the table.

Ruby came at this point, surfing through the bunch of food on a metal tray.

Goodbye law of frictio- wait, was I still keeping track of the laws of physics that have been broken?

Pyrrha went to parry the attack that Ruby was about to use to topple the table-castle, putting both arms in front of her and shielding herself from the attack, but the impact was still strong enough to send her tumbling back. I winced.

" _And that's why you learn proper footwork first so you don't defend attacks like that with two parallel feet!"_ I thought, and then wondering how she managed to be a champion if her on-the-fly combat skills were this poor.

Weiss and Ruby charged forward, and Ren, along with Nora answered the attack. Weiss got out a whole squirt bottle of ketchup and applied it to the floor, making the red liquid spray over the floor. Ren, somehow getting caught up in the gel (which wasn't even slippery!) and collided with the wreck of a table, sending more food flying everywhere.

Nora leapt over the wreckage, showing unexpected levels of agility for a "berserker" style of fighter, and assembled a hammer with a watermelon as a hammerhead. Weiss picked up a swordfish before dueling, rapier-like weapon to hammer-like weapon. Eventually, her precise movements were no match for the ferocious swings that was Nora's fury, and she was hit into a pillar.

The pillar shattered, but Weiss's back did not.

Were the bones of people here made of steel or something? Probably not, considering I was also apparently a person in this world and biologically identical to my species.

That's a topic for another time. Yang chose this moment to equip turkey-gloves (and oh god, that must feel terrible. The grease!), before rocketing forward. Ren, getting up from the pile of garbage he was stuck in, responded to the challenge, grabbing a pair of leeks.

The two attacked each other, and leeks made sickeningly wet slaps on the now cold cooked turkey. Somehow, the leeks didn't actually snap under the powered punches from the blonde brawler, but that was probably due to aura reinforcement.

Yang's leg went up for a roundhouse kick, and… oh.

The flurry of blows that followed made Ren scramble to intercept each titanic blow, until he could no longer react in time and was blown away. Sent into the air, he threw his leeks at Yang to stop her advance, before landing down onto the ground, exhausted.

Nora moved in for vengeance, rapidly punting Yang literally through the roof before she even had a chance to recover. The shower of rubble made Blake react, dodging via a flip backwards, before she grabbed a sausage link and whipped Nora back into her castle, denting some soda machines and making cans of soda explode on impact. Blake had to pull several more acrobatic moves to avoid the onslaught.

Pyrrha chose this moment to recover from her potentially spine-fracturing injury and slammed a hand on the ground, and the sodas rose from their place on the ground amidst some unidentified green sludge. I decided to ignore the definitely impossible physics and just call it "weird superpower thing".

The sodas flew into the air, coming together to form two steel dragons, the silver soda cans glinting in the sunlight, before all slamming into Blake. After conceding defeat amidst the rainbow shower of exploding sodas, Blake slumped to the floor.

Ruby held her fist up and mumbled something to steel her conviction, before crouching down and running across the incredibly long cafeteria. The food swept alongside the gale of the run slowly formed a vortex with Ruby at the center, the crimson comet streaking towards our encampment.

I couldn't abandon my allies, could I? Getting in a stable stance and looking at the approaching storm, I pumped Chi into my arms, feeling the muscles and tendons groan in protest, and pushed forward, sending a slow gust of wind forward.

I was completely blown away by the gale and the unstoppable force that was Ruby Rose. Caught in the vortex, I was swung onto the ceiling and held onto one of the surviving ceiling lights for dear life.

I looked down and saw my other four allies in this food fight splattered against the wall in the midst of a modern art panel.

I sighed. I hope I don't have to pay for the damages. Maybe I should have reconsidered getting into the food fight.

The new semester had begun, and I guess getting into a food fight was one way to begin the year. It was by far the most unconventional (back in my world, we didn't have the budget for such a large cafeteria, let alone a food fight! The closest we got was burning our scratch paper for the literal books of math problems we had to do to practice for the college registration exams that were held annually for China as a sign of victory over our opressors).

And I was actually looking forward to a (hopefully non-chaotic!) year.

…

**Happy new year! I've been really busy trying to not capsize over the amount of research papers I have to read.**

**If you're bored or just want something to binge read until the new year arrives, check out my other stories. They're not in the same fandom, and only one of them is particularly established and semi-consistently updated, but it's a fic.**

**Well, merry late Christmas too! I couldn't get anything out then because this was still in the works (about a thousand words long).**

**Posted 12/31/2020 (the last chapter of the year!)**

**-SpiritOfErebus**


	24. A3C8 Tying up loose ends

**AN: Here we go again…..**

**Get ready for some science mumbo jumbo and my modified version of the team RWBY versus paladin fight, with a lot more realistic collateral damage and attack effectiveness! Physics still breaks and team RWBY still wins though, so there’s no need to doubt Ruby’s mary sue powers and plot armor.**

**-Spirit**

Excerpt 2: Training Montage: Messing up pressure points.

I sat still on a rock. For four hours.

Yeah. Very exciting.

On a slightly related side note, apparently, ink really fades out over thousands of years. And since everything in the diary, my guidebook about pressure points and Chi was in faded ink, I made… a lot of mistakes.

A lot.

Now, as the sun blazed down on my forehead, I found myself completely immobile as I pressed the wrong pressure point on my back. It was just a simple experiment. Apparently massaging the gap between the shoulder bones should be able to help with moving chi throughout the arms. I was wrong by about two inches. Then again, I couldn’t really be blamed for this, right? Since the book said _very clearly_ to have another person that understood pressure points to help you

Since the only other person I knew was Xin, who may or may not be visually impaired or might even forget what I tell him, I preferred to just do it myself.

I probably should tell Xin where I was and what I was doing. Since sitting on a rock in black robes under the sun was swelteringly hot. For once, I was glad for my pale white hair. At least it wasn’t adding to my suffering.

With nothing else to do other than move my eyes and blink (since apparently only things that you can move voluntarily froze up when I hit the so-called “jade door” of the pressure points on the back. It was named so because Jade was notoriously not durable, and getting the pressure point activated in the presence of an enemy would mean certain death.

It was a good a time as any to get some studying down. The diary of that other mysterious person that knew how to use Chi was open on the ground, fully visible. I browsed through the shoddy brushwork and the smudged ink, reading about what to do and what not to do when testing your own pressure points during emergencies.

One tip was staying indoors.

The only bad thing about, well, studying outdoors and not being able to move, was that only the wind flipped the pages. Occasionally, it would even flip the pages backwards.

Not fun.

After what seemed like the third hour, the sun finally stopped shining. I had finally got to the section about fixing my situation and circulating chi through the body would slowly release the pressure point.

Honestly, it seemed a bit like voodoo, like you press that button on a person and they freeze. Still, if it works and can paralyze me for four hours, it probably works.

The book had been blown shut by the wind, and I was just staring at the bamboo again, trying to count each individual vertical ridge on every section of bamboo in my boredom.

And then, in the distance, a wolf howled.

I felt like screaming and renewed my efforts to free myself from my paralysis. If I died by not being able to get off a rock and chewed to death by a wolf, it would probably be just embarrassing.

…

(The present)

…

The library. A sanctum for knowledge.

I breathed in the atmosphere of books and knowledge. It was peaceful, it was serene. It was-

“Your armies have been destroyed!” Yang proclaimed triumphantly as somebody wailed in the background, mourning their loss in the game.

Honestly. People these days have no respect. Being incredibly loud in spaces where people should _learn._

History was fascinating, by the way. These books had such an incredible amount of facts and prospects to wonder about, considering I knew basically nothing about this place.

The particularly interesting part about this world was the economy. The whole world ran on elemental crystals that turned lightning into a solid form. There, however, was one thing that was exploitable.

Fire dust was the cheapest variety of dust, finding almost no uses in civilian life. They had air conditioning that ran on electricity but they didn’t use fire dust to heat themselves up. Fire dust was really only worth something in Atlas, because all of the other kingdoms had temperate climates (despite Vale being on approximately the same amount north as Atlas).

This is where economy comes into play. If I made a steam powered electrical generator powered by fire dust and outsourced lightning dust, I would be able to produce cheaper and easier access electricity that’s produced in the city with the cheapest dust variety possible. There was quite a price gap between fire and lightning dust, meaning that it was totally possible!

Opening up a dust chemistry textbook, I found that a kilogram of fire dust had 1000 mega joules in energy stored. This was a hundred times the energy released when a kilogram of hardwood is burned. The energy required to boil off a kilogram of water was 2257 joules, meaning that using fire dust, it was totally possible to power a medium sized steam powered electrical generator (which used approximately 650 kilograms of water per minute) for about ten hours using only one kilogram of unrefined fire dust. Of course, conversion of energy from lightning dust to electricity was much easier, but it was more expensive and the dust actually needed to be purified.

That was also approximately the amount of energy necessary to melt ten cubic meters of ice almost instantly. So, in reality, the huntsmen, the only group of people who used fire dust in large capacities, were wasting a lot of energy for trivial tasks like sparring.

Grinning like a maniac while churning out the blueprints for another electricity generator (not unlike the one that I attempted to design that ran on only magnets), my vision for the future of my economic stability grew.

I was the only person that was even thinking about this conversion. Other people were way too complacent with the current cost of energy. By making a steam powered electricity generator, I could first patent it and then sell off the idea, potentially making millions. Then I could drop out of school and write a novel or design more things like I always wanted to do.

Yes. Soon, I would escape this endless charade of murder death kill school where I needed to fight in a cage with other teenagers and get into a career with a higher life expectancy.

The life expectancy of huntsman was a number that didn’t even approach the forties. I wanted to live until I get bored of life, and maybe even some more after that!

Still, there were two main obstacles for me to leave this career. One, how does dust even work? I know how much energy it releases (thanks textbook) but how do I convert fire dust energy into heat energy in a gradual process? I can’t just make it explode and call it a day in the boilers.

Secondly, I needed to get money to apply for a patent.

Remnant was a heavily controlled place, with many rich people pulling the strings. Contacting the government about a patent took connections, connections that a random person from the woods in mistral most diffidently did not have.

Besides, even if I asked Headmaster Ozpin, it’s not like he has contacts with, let’s say, the pseudo-dictator general of Atlas, right? They’re from different kingdoms, for crying out loud! Besides, the geo-political climate of Atlas was just too militaristic and different for an outsider like me to submit a patent. And they were the technology capital of the world.

There was still a long road to go. Unless, of course, he knew somebody that was highly connected to major dust companies.

That would be preposterous.

…

Over the weekend, working my shift at the weapons repair shop, I heard another explosion.

I sighed. Why does this keep happening to me? Explosions have to interrupt my existence contemplation last week and now it has to disturb my working shift.

I was trying not to die, damn it! Why does fate keep on trying to impose the life expectancy of a huntsman onto me?

“Should I go check that out?” I asked my boss, who was shuffling papers in the back.

“You’re half a huntsman already, eh?” he said, his long, white beard trailing on the stacks of paperwork he had left to do. “Go for it. The sooner that explosion is sorted, the faster business can get back to normal. Consider it part of your job.”

Throwing me to the wolves like that, huh?

“Fine.” I sighed, “But you’d better pay me overtime.”

“Sure. Just take care of the disturbance, alright?”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

Walking out on the slightly drizzling streets, I tracked the explosions happening on the highways slightly overhead, with sword in hand and complaints in my mind.

“ _Why does he want me to stop conflicts? Conflicts break weapons and make people use construction equipment, and broken weapons and equipment means more business for his repair shop!.”_ I thought, questioning the decision of my manager.

Maybe some people were more concerned about public safety than profit? Wasn’t that a rare thought.

Anyways, the disturbance abruptly stopped overhead and absolute pandemonium began under the bridges.

A gigantic robot was wandering in a bunch of mist, while four familiar red, white, black, and yellow blurs ran around it in circles.

Two of the blurs happened to go to the same spot, and were immediately blasted by the cannons on the robot (because what kind of robot didn’t have cannons?), only for an even faster red blur to score a scratch on the robot.

To absolutely no effect. Wow.

“Checkmate!” a squeaky, far away voice said.

Why were my classmates fighting terrorists again? Can’t one of my weekends just be normal?

Still, what could a guy with a floppy sword do to a futuristic, heavily armed, extremely mobile tank?

The answer was probably nothing. Still, I slowly slid down the side of the basin that they were fighting in. I couldn’t let them lower the huntsman life expectancies down even more.

Once I was down there, I saw Weiss and Blake use more rapier and katana strikes against a robot. To amazing effect.

Seriously. How idiotic can you get? To rush a robot of that size?

I had to get them out of the situation, right? It was only being a good Samaritan.

“Uh… Over here!” I shouted, heart hammering. “I’m a distraction! Please attack me instead!”

“ _Oh crap.”_ I whimpered, rolling out of the way of a barrage of cannon fire. Blake took this opportunity to jump onto the robot and slash at some sort of fragile part. It must be a design flaw, because somehow a part of a robot was destroyed by a katana, since sparks flew off of it and the robot jerked oddly as it continued firing at me.

Meanwhile, running as fast as I can while dodging and weaving, I took off my hoodie, threw it forward, and lay on the ground. Since the mist was thick, the robot would probably continue to shoot at my mobile hoodie and not at the person lying in a small crater on the ground.

Luckily, it worked! I wasn’t torn to shreds instantly by whatever artillery shells were loaded in that robot.

Unluckily, my last good hoodie got reduced to atoms by the hail of gunfire, strips of black cloth flying in different directions like a bomb had been detonated inside of it.

“Yun!” A voice screamed, and a red blur flew over to where the tatters of my hoodie were.

I groaned. If my ruse could fool a robot, it could definitely fool a young child. While Ruby looked for my body, I remained silent but waved at her from behind my cover in the hole in the ground.

When she knelt on the ground and looked like she was about to cry, I whisper shouted at her.

“I’m not dead, Ruby! I just took off my hoodie to fool the robot’s motion sensor! Now get out of there, you’re going to get shot!”

She reacted just in time to avoid missiles.

How overpowered can one robot get?

This situation was great. Five huntsman students armed with melee weapons and light weaponry against a robot with homing missiles, artillery on its arms, and an ungodly amount of machine guns.

The remaining three ran towards our location. I face palmed.

“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked, also crouched behind the rock now.

“You’re all totally giving away my location.” I said, gesturing to her red cape flapping in the wind above her head and the very conspicuous forms of somebody wearing bright yellow running to us.

“Yun? Why are you here?” Yang said, casting a rather suspicious look at me.

“I work here! Six streets west of here!” I said. “Why is it always you guys that always challenge terrorists and cause a ton of property damage?”

“We can’t just do nothing when terrorists like these are roaming around!” Blake yelled at me, gesturing towards the robot.

“And is what you’re doing effective?” I said, pointing also to the barely scratched robot. “You’re probably just causing more property damage, than the terrorists ever could on their own!”

“Well, at least we’re taking action!” Blake said righteously. “The police aren’t even doing anything!”

“Are you sure about that?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “There’s this thing called planning for an operation, and then there’s a thing called blatant vigilantism with no forethought! My point is stop being such idio- oh my god scatter!”

A ton of missiles had just launched and were headed towards our little powwow. We all dove out of the blast zone, and watched the concrete give way like paper as tens of missiles scorched the earth.

“Again, my point is to stop being such idiots! What are you going to do against that?” I said, eyeing the top of the robot in case it shot more showers of death at us.

“At least we’re doing something!” Ruby shouted. “Ladybug!”

I was about to question the sudden bug reference when Blake and Ruby went into action suddenly, speeding towards the robot’s legs.

The robot, being a heavy object, just sank to the ground in a sitting position. Their attacks struck against the sturdy metal, doing absolutely nothing.

Atop the robot, machine guns protruded out of its shoulders and shot at the two attackers. They retreated, but while fleeing, Ruby took out one of its guns with a well placed sniper bullet.

“Are we still not doing anything?” Ruby said, an uncharacteristic smirk on her face.

“You took out one gun turret. That’s like, one out of the fifty that are still there. Speaking of which, dodge!”

Another volley of missiles blew all of us back, but Weiss hit Blake with something, and an arcane symbol lit up under Blake. For a moment, I thought that she was going to summon a demon or something, but Blake suddenly blurred out of existence and became a ton of afterimages, each in a different attacking pose. Purple arcs flew out from her totally static position and bisected the explosive missiles.

It was a good defense… in theory. However, missiles weren’t so easy to assemble. The chaotic mixture of chemicals in the air turned a controlled dust explosion into a totally uncontrolled catastrophe, the synthetic dust activators (a way to activate dust without applying aura to it) splashed several missile’s worth of dust mixtures and caused an extremely flashy explosion. Eyes white and ears ringing, I collapsed on the ground, fumbling wildly. I could feel my blood pounding in my head as the dizziness threatened to overcome me.

And then a purple glow lapsed over me, easing the suffering. Thank the heavens for aura.

But somebody wasn’t affected by the explosion. And guess who it was? The person piloting the death machine.

Yang was kicked into several pillars and actually went through the concrete structure, her aura flaring and probably working overtime.

It was times like this that made me want to curl up and cry. For one, producing light that stays on its own in the air requires ridiculous amounts of energy that definitely do not come from the soul. Secondly, one does not bend the space-time continuum without causing a black hole to appear and implode, taking us and most of the planet with it.

Apparently, Earth survived the black hole creation event and Yang survived getting thrown through several concrete pillars. This spoke volumes about the durability of people’s bones or the sloppiness of the workers building the pillars.

Somehow, she stood up, her hair literally on fire.

I had no words. Literally none.

Just _What the heck. (I seemed to be saying that a lot lately.)_

And then tanked the next punch of the robot, not even budging as half a ton of metal met her fist. The robot’s other arm then punched again. It was also stopped by a punch from Yang.

“How is she… uh… still alive?” I asked, my eyes wide with astonishment.

“She takes hits and uses that energy to fight back.“ Ruby said with a tone of reverence. “That’s what makes her special.”

The robot had taken quite a few super powered punches, and retreated backwards, stumbling and missing an arm.

Ruby and Weiss said something to each other, before Ruby crouched down and shot many bullets through a couple of white symbols that Weiss had conjured. The bullets, with swirling blue lights congregating around the projectile, streaked towards the robots and froze the robot’s joints.

Yang, meanwhile, was being swung around by Blake via ribbon, golden fire trailing behind her blurry form.

I, meanwhile, noticed somebody behind a pillar. Somebody very short. Since team RWBY had the situation handled, I went to evacuate the potentially lost citizen.

It turned out to be a girl holding a parasol, with odd two-toned hair and questionable apparel. Who immediately smiled sadistically and began attacking me.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” I said, backpedaling and parrying the blows. “I don’t really mean you any harm. I was just going to ask if you’re lost or something.”

She suddenly shattered, and I felt air currents move behind my back. The mystery girl was probably trying to go for a backstab. I grabbed the tip of the parasol and turned around, pulling the parasol forward. The apparently very treacherous mystery girl tumbled forward, looked at the combat situation where team RWBY and the robot were fighting, before shattering again and reappearing in front of the criminal. Hastily, she unfurled her parasol, did a small bow, and the two just… stopped moving.

The two stayed locked in the position until Yang went for a punch. Their image shattered, much like the mystery girl when she teleported right behind me.

Odd.

“So, can your superpowers manipulate the folds of space-time and kinetic energy? I’d say that’s pretty nifty and unfair.” I said, walking towards the girls, who were apparently still in combat stances.

“I don’t even know what half of those things are.” Yang said, shrugging. “But okay.”

**And that’s the chapter.**

**Oh boy am I exhausted from writing all of this and studying.**

**Hope you enjoyed! And please follow, favorite, and review or else… well… I can’t really do anything.**

**-Spirit**


	25. Interlude 1: Past, present, future

**What's this? A filler chapter?**

**Yeah. I tried my hardest trying to write a fluff scene after the two plot intensive terrorist attacks that Yun unwillingly participated in.**

**Note: Descriptions of making food or training might not actually be accurate. Don't intentionally torture yourself by poking a wooden board really repeatedly. It's not healthy. Just don't.**

**Anyways, please follow, favorite, and review!**

**-Spirit**

**(Discord channel: drop by to chat for a bit :P. Link: discord** **.gg/jjM9yVaHJX**

**In case it wasn't clear, Yun is a blind person reincarnated to be a sighted person in the RWBY world while Xin wears the headband thing to obscure his eyes because the robotic implants he has for eyes are too sensitive.**

…

I was practicing martial arts when Pyrrha found me.

"Why are you poking wood very aggressively?"

I turned to see her standing at the edge of the corridor, looking nervous but also very confused.

"It's to train finger strength to use another martial art." I said, ignoring the throbbing pain in my finger bones. Violet flashes occasionally racked my fingers, showing the internal damage, healing it, and putting it back together even stronger. "The thing about aura is that it instantly regenerates damage, meaning that people can get a full body workout if they just tear their muscles enough."

"I thought muscle tears were unhealthy?" Pyrrha said, distracted.

"Yeah." I said, watching my fingers sink about a quarter of a centimeter into the wooden board. "But exercising also does that, but to a healthy extent. The muscles regenerate and create more muscle cells, strengthening your whole body."

"O-oh." Pyrrha stuttered, looking very confused now.

"Anyways. What did you want to talk to me about?"

Pyrrha blushed and put her hands behind her back, and dragging her feet back and forth in the grass.

"It's… about Jaune."

I began to feel massively uncomfortable and refocused my efforts of giving my finger bones minor fractures that were immediately healed. This uncharacteristic

"So uh… you trained him, right?

"Yeah." I said, chuckling. I accidentally burst a vein on my hand as I lost control temporarily of my Chi. "Oh… that isn't good." My hand flared violet once more and the wound fixed itself.

It did nothing to numb the pain. Still, for training purposes, aura allowed your body to alter itself much faster.

Pyrrha now looked like she regretted her decision to talk to me, looking at the blood splattered on the grass.

"What does he… like?"

"That's awfully vague." I said, focusing on channeling Chi in my fingers. My joints creaked and felt awfully stiff, but it was supposedly the intended effect. Bone fingers, the theoretical claw martial art that had both made an appearance in action novels and apparently the diary, was an art made to pierce stone and metal. Said to be one of the strongest armor piercing attack (completely ignoring your opponent's Chi defenses), it took ten years to master through daily practice and three different stages.

It was also theoretically possible to slowly poison yourself intentionally, force the poison to your fingertips, and then force the poison from your fingertips into your opponent's bloodstream.

I struck the wood, and a deep scratch was made across the board.

"He seems to have an unhealthy obsession with cereal, being a huntsman, and not being completely useless." I said, sighing.

Concentrating all my power in my index finger, I stabbed it into the wood, only to immediately regret the decision. Still, it was part of the routine described on the diary, and pain was probably natural.

"What do you mean unhealthy obsession?" Pyrrha asked, sitting down and leaning against the stone pillars of Beacon's courtyard.

"Well, he only started training himself about seven or eight months. I forgot." I said, straightening out my index finger as aura healed me. Did I mention how incredibly useful and unfair aura was? I'll say it again then.

"He ran up to me reading in the woods and trying to heal myself from severe internal bleeding. I poked a pressure point and froze him for two hours, and he came back the next day with a sword that he didn't know how to use and demanded to fight me."

"And?"

"I agreed to train him after spin kicking him into a tree because he was persistent and I needed a test dummy for pressure point experimentation."

"Did… he know?" Pyrrha said, looking worried.

"The test dummy thing was the eighth thing I've ever said to him, I think."

"He still came for training?" that expression grew from worried to concerned.

"I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure that's not normal."

"…Yeah."

"So, why do you like him?"

"W-what?" Pyrrha stuttered, recoiling.

"It's obvious. Again, I'm no psychologist, but through the variety of novels I've read or listened to, this is usually an indicator for an interest in somebody."

"Of course not! I was just… wondering… about my partner… to get along with him! Yeah!" She said frantically, waving her arms in front of her face.

"Whatever you say." I said, changing the topic before things really got uncomfortable.

"You know… I have another question to ask you."

"Yeah?" I said, momentarily pausing my training to inspect my fingers. They didn't really look that different, but I could feel that somehow they were stronger. More used to Chi.

"From what you do here, you're actually really reluctant to do anything huntsman related. Why? Do you… not want to be a huntsman?"

"The average lifespan for each huntsman is about forty years old, and they usually retire before then because of missing limbs or something equally catastrophic." I said, finally sitting down cross legged on the grass, feeling the soothing cold from the earth seep up and soothe my sore body.

"I don't want to suffer debilitating disabilities. I just want to live until I'm eighty, see everything this world has to offer, and then maybe live some more."

"A lot of people become huntsman because they think it's a fun career, though!" Pyrrha said, probably protesting my cynical worldview.

"That's what they want you to think." I said, massaging my palms to smooth out the circulation. "It's probably propaganda so the kingdoms can repel the Grimm threat. I've been in life threatening situations since I was four. I really don't want any more."

"So…. What do you want to do?" Pyrrha said, looking at the dented wooden board. "And why work so hard?"

"It's because I don't have a choice." I said, now lying down and looking up at the clouds. The sights never get old after a lifetime of wondering what they were.

"I don't have any money, and my bank account consists of three months worth of my paychecks. I have to pay for all of my clothing that I damaged during all of the various incidents with terrorists. To actually get a house, food, and water after I graduate, things are going to be really tough, unlike people with real families."

"I've never thought about things this way." Pyrrha said.

"That's because you don't need to." I said, closing my eyes now. The sun's glare was being a bit too bright. "You have that being famous thing, right?"

"Wait, if you won the tournament that you beat me in and got the money prize, isn't it still a modest sum of money?"

I huffed. "A modest sum, huh? Being somebody without an identity, I had to get the cash version of the award, which was way smaller. About a thousand times less."

"O-oh."

"Yeah. Being the poster child of Mistral or something, you probably don't have to worry about money."

Pyrrha fell silent like the class enemy she was, her capitalist vision finally being exposed to the difficulties of the lower class. Or so I thought.

"I'd better get back to training. Good luck with your… problems."

Pyrrha just sort of ran away uncharacteristically.

Psh. Romance. A fool's folly. One should at least secure a house and economic stability before pursuing a partner.

I once again subjected my hands to striking a sheet of wood.

Yeah, this wasn't working. My rate of improvement was slowing.

Maybe it was time to move onto… live test subjects?

…

"Are you sure this is a good idea, me sparring against you?" Jaune said, looking at the holes I had made in the reinforced wood with just my finger. "Will I… get dismembered?"

"Don't worry about it." I said, "You have aura. It should protect you."

"But you said that this martial art was specifically made to be chi piercing! What if it pierces aura?"

"That's why you're my apprentice, right? You have enough aura to heal from this."

"Yun no!" Jaune screamed.

"It's for science."

"This isn't a science at all!"

We paused as the room to the practice arena opened. Another head of blonde hair entered the room.

"If you're looking for a sparring partner, I'm willing to beat you down into the dirt."

Sudden hostility much? I don't remember annoying anybody too much…

Oh. The club.

"Fine." I said, "I guess I deserve it?"

Yang grinned, and the domes fell.

"Are you already armed?"

"It's really _handy_ to have your weapons collapse into bracelets."

"Why did you just emphasize 'handy' in that sentence?" I said, face purposefully blank.

"It's a pun!" Yang said, waving her hands in the air. Jaune groaned.

"Nah. I'm just messing with you. What are the rules? My aura isn't exactly a hundred percent right now because of training."

"How about fifty percent aura loss?"

I looked at the gauge. I was at about sixty five percent.

"Sure."

Jaune pressed some button and then the lights outside dimmed as the ceiling lights shone brighter than ever.

Yang grinned and showcased something on her elbows. "This time, you're not getting to any of those pressure points again."

"There are about twenty major pressure points that can be potentially fatal, none of which are on the elbow and about 16 of them are on the back." I said.

Yang paled.

"Invest in better armor."

"Why don't you wear armor then?"

"Because nobody else knows how to use pressure points. They're way too obsessed with firearms."

"Fair enough." She said.

And then the fight began. Once again, I was reminded of the pain that guns existed and that if I got hit by those bullets.

(I would probably die.)

Still, the huntsman career was wrought with danger, and I guess this was a career hazard. Ducking under the rapid streams of pellets, I grabbed her gauntlets and pulled her off balance, before forming a claw in my hand and struck her jacket clad back.

Golden aura still shimmered across her back, but I could see the marks that my Chi left on the tough fabric, with many areas noticeably lighter, threads frayed and dye noticeable faded. With the momentum of the strike, I just shoved her forward again before standing up straight and crouching down again.

That exchange went by fast, but the difference in precise hand to hand combat was clear.

Yang just shrugged off the damage (since with aura, there wasn't any pain).

"To be honest, I'm just a bad matchup for you. I'm way too much of a technical fighter."

"That's what pisses me off so much." She growled, eyes flashing red.

"Well, think about this. How am I supposed to fight Grimm like this? Grimm don't have pressure points."

She tilted her head, before nodding and chuckling. "Wow. You got your work cut out for you , huh? No ranged weapons at all."

"Yeah." I said, sighing. "Can we just get this over with? I basically already know whether or not the armor piercing aspect of this style actually exists or not."

"Does it exist?"

"Only barely." I said, hands forming claws again. "It's only strong enough to wear down your jacket after it passes through aura."

"What is it supposed to do to a person?"

"Pierce somebody's skull at the final stage of the art."

"… That's kind of _head on_ answer _._ "

"The pun doesn't even work."

Yang dashed at me again right as I finished the sentence, hair smoldering slightly and fist aimed straight at my face. Bracing my stance and flooding my veins with Chi (some of the energy leaking out and making my robes billow in an invisible wind), I stopped the punch with an outstretched hand, being forced back a couple of feet.

Then, I just poured Chi into my arm and channeled it offensively into Yang's arm. Aura flared all over her arm as her arm healed the internal damage.

"How are you doing this?" She said, forcing me away with another punch. Her aura had decreased by twenty percent in the short interval that I was actively trying to take her arm apart (with Chi, of course).

"Take it as a sort of semblance." I said, taking a couple of deep breaths in between words to replenish my reserves. "The funny thing is that your aura doesn't register it as a threat until it does damage."

"That's pretty cool." She said, grinning. "It's still kind of a jerk move, though. It doesn't fuel my semblance unless it's a clear attack."

"…. Let's just get to the point." I said, looking at the clock that was included in the aura display. "I have something to do today too."

Dashing forward, fingers creaking from an overexcess of chi, I jumped into the air and slashed at the air in front of her. With Chi influencing the power, the gust made her squint slightly in irritation. With the rotational force from the slash, I forced her to lean to one side to brace for the impact. With the reactionary force from the kick, I then spun _again_ and sank my fingers into her forearm. Her aura glowed gold, before my fingers were ejected and I saw the red marks that indicated the freshly healed area where my attack had landed.

The pre-programmed buzzers sounded, and the dome fell. I held out a hand to Yang. She took it, gauntlets retracting back into bracelets.

"Don't think that this is the end of the question about who's stronger." She said, though not entirely seriously. "I'll beat you one day."

"Yeah, probably." I said, casting a look at Jaune's awestruck expression. "Eventually, you'll figure out all my tricks and hit me through a wall or something."

She laughed, then winced as she moved her arm too much. Her aura flashed over her upper arm again, over the afflicted area of the attack, before she left the room.

"That's enough training for today." I said, picking up my sword and clipping it to my belt.

"But you didn't teach me anything!" Jaune complained, standing up. "How am I supposed to get better if you don't teach me?"

"Maybe you could find somebody that actually knows how to teach somebody to fight." I said, remembering certain relationships between Jaune and his partner. "Maybe somebody that's trained all their lives with a sword and shield and that's in your team."

Then, I left, leaving Jaune to pick up on the very obvious hint I gave him for him to approach Pyrrha (and hopefully stop depending on me to teach him how to fight. For goodness's sake, our styles are very incompatible. Almost opposites.).

…

What was the thing that I had to do?

Standing in the student kitchens, I overlooked the supplies that I had bought. Bok Choy, minced pork, and some flour in a glass bowl, along with a pitcher of water. Another small bit of flour remained in a small bowl, there to be sprinkled on the finished product.

Dumplings.

I haven't had any since I died, and I really was missing the taste. Besides, it was something so simple that nobody could mess it up. The only thing that was hard was knowing how much salt to put in the meat, but I could avoid that problem by just lightly salting it and then putting some soy sauce on the side in case it's too bland.

I hefted the cleaver and began chopping the lettuce into small shreds, before sweeping it up onto the flat of the blade of the cleaver and put it in with the meat. This process repeated until I had stripped the vegetable down to a tiny little nub of leaves, which I promptly set to the side.

Then, I poured a little water into the flour, spread it around, and then pouring in some more until the water was evenly spread amongst the flour, and began kneading the dough with the heel of my palm, pressing down on the vaguely soupy creation and dragging the wad of dough out of the water before shoving it back in, connecting the blob to more flour and slowly expanding it.

(I barely remembered how to do this and just looked up kneading dough.)

At last, the water was absorbed into the flour, and I stretched out the circular blob until it resembled a white rope about as long as my arm, before I took the cleaver to it and chopped it into little pieces about as big as a sugar cube. Then, I took the rolling pin to the pieces and flattened them while rotating the pieces of dough around until they were flat and circular, before dusting it with some flour and setting it to the side.

The process was cathartic. I had heard my parents (from my old life, of course) describing the process and I had also listened to the grating sound that wood made when it was rolled on by another piece of wood. It was almost relaxing enough that I didn't notice Nora barging in through the kitchen doors, blubbering about pancakes.

"Whatcha making?" Nora said, leaning down on the counter and looking at the dumpling peels. "Ooh, are those tiny pancakes? Ren! Yun's making tiny pancakes!"

"Nora, calm down." Ren said almost reflexively, before looking at the process. Something softened in his gaze as he looked at the process almost nostalgically. "Dumplings, huh?"

"Yeah." I said, finishing the production of another peel and throwing it to the side.

"Haven't had those since I was a kid." Ren said, turning away and looking out the kitchen window.

I was familiar with these scenes in the action novels, during which one of the characters would have a flashback or describe a tragic incident that happened in the past.

"… Want some when I'm done?" I asked.

"Sure!" Nora said, being the excitable person she was. "If the preparation process has something that sort of looks like pancakes, it can't be that different, right?"

Nora learned the hard way that dumplings were not like pancakes at all, and that drinking soy sauce was usually a recipe for disaster.

Still, it was good food.

…

**And that's the chapter.**

**Hope it was ok to read.**

**Again, please follow, favorite, and review! Criticize my characterization or horrible fight scene choreography! I don't actually know if you all can keep up with my technical spam about Chi and aura, so shoot me a PM or something about it if you think it can be improved.**

**Thanks. And have a great day!**

**-Spirit**


	26. A4 C1 Rapid Revelations

**At your behest, I have been summoned! …. To write another chapter of this story.**

**Hope you enjoy.**

**-Spirit**

Excerpt # 14 Bank Robbery

I was managing my student funds when the alarms sounded. The reverberating wails of the sirens echoed in my ears, almost making me collapse on the spot.

Immediately, I gathered up the little bit of cash I had just withdrawn and ran. I obviously wasn't a hero in the novels I had read. I was just a blind kid.

Ironically, I just collided into a burglar. I could feel the burlap sack and the cash in the bag.

Then, the police caught up and surrounded us.

Ironically, I became the hero by being a coward.

And why did I end up in a WeChat article again? For once, I was forced to not sleep during the breaks in between schools and explain how I was just an idiot and ran into the burglar like I was blind, while pretending to be able to see them.

I'm pretty sure a ton of them began to have suspicious about if I really possessed the ability to see things.

Still, at least I got to the end of the week without horrifically failing at something like… walking off a balcony or something.

…

**(Oh my god why did I say that there had to be 17 of these….. Ugh.)**

**(I hope these "past life scenes" aren't too confusing.)**

…

The combat class, for a classroom, really looked like some sort of underground fight ring. There was a balcony, for some reason, and viewing boxes(?) on them that were always reminiscent of bars in various novels.

Don't ask what I've been reading these days. Novels from Vacuo and people wandering the sand, hunting deadly creatures, made Vacuo really sound like America. Where everybody had a gun, the central government is weak, and people get drunk in bars, fight, be insane, throw alligators into fast food restaurants, and start insurrections to keep unpopular modes of government (like a monarchy) in place.

Oh, wait. That was just Vacuo. Not America.

Pyrrha was fighting CRDL down on the stage, being extremely acrobatic, dashing a lot towards the enemy, and jumping a ton into the air for devastating downward sweeps of the lance. CRDL, meanwhile, barely put up a defense.

Cardin knocked Dove out with his mace while preparing an attack.

You can see how coordinated they are with that one action.

While CRDL struggled against Pyrrha with moves like spinning in midair with a ton of daggers to look like a rolling boarbatusk, making awkward spins to transition your sword to gun form, spinning awkwardly to regain your balance, and spinning around to deflect lance attacks, Pyrrha… also spun around to sweep the legs of her combatants down.

If this match was made to show off to the exchange students, they shouldn't have put CRDL up there.

At last, Pyrrha suplexed Cardin one last time, almost snapping his neck, before slamming him into the arena and making the solid, reinforced concrete crack and standing up stylishly.

"And that's the match." Professor Goodwitch said, strolling forward while casually repairing the floor with a wave of her crop.

"Lucky shot." Cardin grumbled. He failed to notice that no gunshots were involved in Pyrrha's beatdown against him. Then, he collapsed.

"Well done, Ms. Nikos." Goodwitch cast a semi-disgusted glance at Cardin's groaning form. "You should have no problem qualifying for the tournament."

"Thank you, professor." Pyrrha said, standing up a little straighter and exiting "combat mode".

"I know that's a tough act to follow, but we have time for one more match. Any volunteers?" A teacher's strict gaze was cast at the balcony.

"Ms. Belladona, you've been rather… docile lately. Why don't you…"

"I'll do it." A voice sounded from behind me.

I turned around to see a grey haired (was that a legitimate hair color somebody young could have?) teenager with a cocky smirk and wore a lot of metal bracer variants over his arms, from his shoulder to the back of his hand.

"Very well. Let's find an opponent." Professor Goodwitch said, typing on her tablet.

"Actually…" he said, "I want to fight … him."

I found a finger pointing at me.

"Me?" I said, pointing to myself before looking where he pointed. "You mean Ren?"

Ren was sitting in front of me. He turned back, waved, and waited for his response.

"Not him, you."

"Oh." I sighed. "Let's just get this over with.".

…

I walked out of the locker rooms, sword in hand and with my old fan in my hands. I had taken some time to rejoin the pieces with metal screws this time, and sanded some scratches away from the fan "backbone". I also had sharpened the kunai knives I hid in the fan's folds, seeing the need for a projectile weapon.

"And… begin!"

He rushed at me and threw a jumping kick into my face.

I just sidestepped it and caught the foot. He seemed vaguely surprised. I just suppressed a smile and pulled him forward.

Surprisingly, despite his lithe figure, he was actually really heavy. His legs were awfully tough, and he was probably wearing armor, so I barely managed to drag him off balance.

Then, I punched him in the gut. Apparently he didn't register that his kicks could be caught, or he didn't think everything through about overextending, but he didn't block my hit.

While he fell forward, wheezing, as silver shone around his torso, I kicked him in the back of the knees. It didn't do as much as I thought it wood, and he just wobbled forward once more.

Was he wearing leg weights or something?

At this point, he flared his aura all over his body, got up, and rolled to a comfortable distance away. A quick glance at the monitor found him missing about ten percent of his aura while my bar was still completely full.

Taking a more cautious approach this time, he fired a gun… from his boot?

Okay…

Impractical methods of activation aside (did he have to pull the trigger with his toes or something?), it was actually… not a bad way of synergizing gun and weapon.

I blocked the bullet with a Chi-reinforced fan as he used another bullet to propel himself with recoil, rolled on the ground, pulled some sweet dance moves, and then swept the ground repeatedly.

Knowing that jumping would just leave me vulnerable to the boot-guns that were pointing upwards, I just backed away.

This was honestly pretty tough. His legs were probably armored, and as a result, really bulky. Against my really thin sword and almost broken fan, the only ways I could prevent damage was to catch the blows. But even that wasn't working, as he was growing increasingly cautious of my counterattacks.

The bullets continued to fly at me, and I was distracted from my musings to deflect the bullets.

I was… probably going to lose again.

Looking at the next bullet fly at me, I sidestepped to the right and unleashed the kunai at my opponent.

Wait, I could see the bullet? I looked at the next one and it was, indeed, not a trick of the light. I could actually see the bullets.

He fired approximately two per second, so… how would I do this?

There was a section in the old diary about using Chi to spin things, so how about relatively slower bullets? The next bullet came firing close to my right hand and I bought my hand up while making it move backwards to match the pace of the bullet and decrease the relative velocity between the bullet and my hand, making sure that it didn't shoot a hole through my palm, while gently coaxing my Chi to make a small breeze in the palm of my hand to create a small, rotating wind.

The bullet fell into the "eye" of the miniature "storm" and stayed there as I began spinning.

I knew training to catch rocks blind would pay off. These bullets were just faster, lighter, and much deadlier rocks.

" _If I had a pair of metal gloves or something, this would be so much easier!"_

The bullets, still rapidly moving as I caught them in the palm of my hand and spun in place to reduce their velocity, made cuts in my hand. Luckily, aura existed.

" _I can't believe I'm actually pulling off a scene from The Legend of the Sword and Saber!"_ I thought, raising my hand to add another bullet into my collection.

That particular scene had two martial artists use their version of Chi to make an alternate type of the _Tai Chi_ force, an application of Chi that allowed whatever object that was being held to be spun in their hands. That was how I used my fan as a boomerang, and how I was managing to not die from the bullets.

It was impractical physics, but since when did physics apply in this world?

At last, my hands were nearly full, and the momentum had mostly been nullified by my ceaseless spinning. Maybe Cardin and his gang really had a point, spinning to regain balance.

Steeling my gaze and stopping my rotation, I put a firm foot down and flung the bullets forward, the projectiles still carried forward with the momentum of my spin. My opponent's eyes widened as he saw the silver bullets he shot thrown back at him.

The resulting, oddly misty explosion, took out a good chunk of his aura as he parried the bullets by… kicking them. He landed on the edge of the arena boundary as a result, and his aura was left sitting at fifty percent while mine was at a rather comfortable ninety percent, the cuts and bruises from my imperfect handling of the bullets taking their toll.

Seizing the opportunity to attack, I rushed forward, throwing my fan at him as well. He parried it with another kick, redirecting the weapon upwards. One kunai knife, still remaining in the folds of the weapon, slipped out and began rising up into the air.

It was coming down at his head.

Not bothering with my sword, I took a hold of his upper arm and sent a wave of Chi through it. With the discomfort, he struggled and kicked at my feet to dislodge me, but my grappling remained firm.

The kunai knife came down on his head. Silver flared over his head, and while he was distracted and not coating his arms in Aura, I sent a lot of Chi into his veins.

Silver crackled on his skin as his aura bar decreased from thirty percent… to twenty… to ten. The falling kunai knife had taken ten percent of his aura (approximately) and he used another ten percent to protect himself from the first waves of Chi I had used when I was keeping him in place.

I had won the match. The buzzer sounded, and the black, oppressive dome fell.

I sighed, rubbing my palms. The skin was starting to chafe.

"What's your name?" I asked the person who challenged me.

"Mercury." He grunted, dusting off his pant legs.

"Nice fight. Though, you have to be able to respond to grappling attacks. You're way too off balance and one good grab of the leg and you'll be completely immobilized by a more muscular opponent."

"I got too used to fighting these huntsman wannabes." Mercury said. "You're different. You fight like you want to fight people, not monsters."

"I'd honestly not fight at all, but being a huntsman pays well." I said, shrugging.

"Good performance, both of you." Professor Goodwitch said, repairing the minute cracks on the concrete that I just had begun to notice.

"Mr. Wu, good job on using unconventional tactics to get out of an otherwise… unfavorable situation. Perhaps next time, you should invest more in a more viable defensive tool or ranged weapon. If the bullets weren't wind dust bullets, your hands would be torn to shreds right now."

I nodded, though I definitely wasn't using a gun-sword. Dove's weapon was just clunky and I didn't want my sword to end up like a malformed abomination.

(Seriously, how do you load those things?)

"And Mr. Black, your performance was excellent, but please do try to keep counterattacks in mind."

Mercury nodded, while I contemplated getting iron gloves.

" _Maybe some armor isn't that bad of an idea."_

…

Turns out, stores did sell chainmail!

It was pretty expensive, but if I wasn't risking my fingerbones every time I fought, I'd say that it was a pretty good deal.

I sent my boss at the mechanic shop a small sketch of a metal gauntlet with a rather long armguard for a shield. He had designed "mecha-shift" weapons (the fancy way of just saying abomination of engineering), and I was sure he could do something this easy.

When he emailed me about dust implants, I just went with ice dust. Even if I messed up with using it in dust class, usually I would just overload the ice cube with Chi and shatter it.

Water wasn't really organic, anyways.

Still, I could literally freeze other people to my heavy, gauntlet clad hand. A great immobilization technique.

Still, I don't know what that would do to insanely strong people like Nora. I've seen her literally hit two people out of the combat ring, and I don't know how much steel armor, Cardin, and his mace weights, but it was probably a lot.

Yang would probably just punch my arm, shatter the ice, my arms, and the gauntlet.

It was totally an original idea (a sleuth of online comics had a ton of characters with cool gloves or something) but the more I thought about it, the more practical it was.

I also emailed him about keeping a high carbon percentage in the steel (saying that my "semblance" would break the metal if the carbon content wasn't high enough).

That was enough weaponry for a day. I refocused on trying to poke holes in wood with my bare hands (after seeing that huntsman could break a rock's surface with their fingers in an educational video about aura), to not be as useless to heavily armored opponents.

Seriously, Yatsuhashi looked seriously scary with all of those armor plates, even if he did keep some of his chest exposed for me to disable his pressure points with.

…

"Did you figure anything out about him?" Cinder fall asked Mercury, sitting on the dorm room beds.

"Not really." Mercury said, stroking his chin. "He really just had some sort of aura draining semblance, and it doesn't he look like he uses aura as a shield but rather as a passive healing power."

"How do you know?" Cinder said, yellow eyes glowing.

"I saw his hands bleed after catching my bullets." Mercury said, now sitting straighter. "Seriously, this kid is insane. Even harder to fight than my dad. Granted, I wasn't completely serious, but he still really packed a punch."

"How does this… aura draining semblance work?"

"I just felt like I was burning from the inside. My aura only held it back partially, and it was like I was constantly healing from having my muscles torn apart."

Mercury shivered, and then laughed. "If that was my semblance, I would've made my old man's passing so much more painful."

"Since we know the invincible girl's semblance from that blonde buffoon talking about her controlling soda cans during a food fight,

"You sure Sun wasn't just exaggerating?"

"Maybe not, but controlling either water or metal would give her a real edge in combat, and enable her to control her opponent's movements."

"It's probably metal control." Emerald said, chipping in. "The footage of her contests shows that her shield makes almost unnatural trajectories, and I could see her eyes tracking the shield as her fingers make minute movements."

As an illusionist, she knew how people acted.

"People assume that she's destined for victory… when she really takes her fate into her own hands… interesting." Cinder smirked, putting her scroll down.

"Add her to the list."

Emerald got out her own scroll and obliged.

"You should be able to take her, no problem."

"It's not about overpowering your enemy. It's about taking away what power they have." Cinder said, eyes glowing slightly in the dark dorms.

"And we will… in time. But the other champion… Yun Wu… What are your reports on him, Emerald?"

"He's an incredibly bland person. He sleeps in the janitor's closet, reads books all day, works part time at a mechanic shop, and came from the middle of nowhere. His records were registered about a year ago and he says that he's from the middle of Anima."

"But he was the one to defeat the invincible girl." Mercury said, "Out of all of the damn people in mistral."

"Look at his weapon." Emerald said, pulling out vintage footage and showing Yun throwing his fan at Pyrrha, and the knives.

"They're all made of something other than metal. Organic material, probably carbon fiber made from burnt bamboo fibers." Emerald said.

Mercury glared at her.

"What? I know what carbon fiber looks like. I'm an illusionist. It comes with the semblance." Emerald stuttered out, averting her eyes.

"Either way, he's not really a threat. I'm sure you can take him if you take him seriously, Mercury. After all, failure comes with… consequences."

Mercury gulped.

…

**Oh god, that's another chapter. That took longer than I thought it would.**

**Obligatory Discord link: discord . gg / YQNxy7NUEv**

**Spoiler warning below: Don't read if you "want to watch Volume 8 after it all comes out"**

**RWBY volume 8 has turned out to be… well… I think the concept of people being turned into a grimm is cool, but….**

**If you add science to the fact that Adam's body was somehow preserved, shipped to Atlas while he was alive (or at least he hasn't been eaten by fish), found by Salem, and then dunked into a grimm pool….**

**How much money does Salem have to buy refrigerators, hire a private jet, and convince the pilot to drive it to the grimmlands? All of the main villains were off doing stuff when the procedure should have happened, so…**

**Does Salem have an errand boy?**

**Exit: People have told me (through reviews) that the guy in the hound is actually one of the missing huntsman from Volume 4(or was it five?). I guess that makes more sense.**

**That's just some of my ridiculous thought process. Don't mind me, just a local insane author scribbling gibberish.**

**Anyways, hope you had fun reading, and please follow, favorite, and review!**

**-Spirit**


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